In the Storytelling issue, we offer a rich selection of international papermaking folklore, including fairytales, myths, fiction about papermaking, papermaking work songs, poems, and the like.

Bernie Vinzani describes how the British novelist Eden Phillpotts sited his Storm in a Teacup at England’s Tuckenhay Mill. The story comes alive with the accompanying Tuckenhay paper sample contributed by the Cox family.

Claire Cuccio discusses the long life of Echizen paper, and its central place in Najio River, a 1969 Japanese novel by Mizukami Tsutomu.

Dorothy Field investigates one our field’s enduring stories, the capture of Chinese papermakers in Samarkand.

Michelle Samour speaks to the Koretsky family about their favorite folk stories during their decades of papermaking research.

Mary Leto tells us about the Boo Hag folk legend of the Gullah Geechee culture, and the practice of papering the walls for protection against evil spirits. Artist Leroy Campbell shares how he employs this practice in his prints and paintings.

Hanne Frey Husø addresses paper-based archives as historical resource.

Aliza Thomas & Henk Porck recounts Henk Voorn’s establishment of the Paper History Collection at the National Library of the Netherlands.

Peggy Prentice and Sumio Suzuki present a Japanese papermaking work song by papermaker Tadao Endo (1913–1997), accompanied by a sample of the rare and storied Shiroishi washi.

Peter Thomas and Richard Flavin contribute a selection of their papermaking work songs written to the tune of well-known folk songs.

We present poems about paper and papermaking, contributed and collected by Aliza Thomas, Henk Porck, Karla Elling/W.S. Merwin, Gordon Sisler, and Buzz Spector; new fairytales penned by Kang Bumhee about Korean paper and Trisha Oralie Martin on Filipino papermaking; and visual narratives on papermaking by Renate Klein and Roberto Mannino.

Reviews: Akemi Martin: On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History; and Sukey Hughes: A Song of Praise for Shifu.

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