A 2026 National Storytelling Festival Preview
As a little girl, Kelly Campos marveled at the incredible life her father had lived before she was born. Only later did she learn that he had made most of it up.
He loved to regale Campos and her siblings with tall tales about how he made meals for hundreds of soldiers as a cook in the Army. Or how, before he met her mother, he’d dated Jennifer Lopez — but had to let her go so she could pursue her dream of becoming a star.
Her father didn’t know that he was a storyteller. And Campos didn’t either until she went to library science school and met Janice Del Negro, a long-time fixture at the National Storytelling Festival. Del Negro mentored Campos, but more importantly gave her a concept for a mix of artistic forms she’d been exposed to in one way or another since childhood.
“It was giving storytelling a name,” Campos says. “Giving it an identity. It had already existed in my life in so many ways. But now I understood that it was a thing.”
Like many performers before her, Campos took a long and winding path to become a storyteller. Born and raised in Detroit, she was heavily involved in the city’s arts scene until she moved to Chicago in 2004. She was into theater (especially musical theater) before she became interested in rock music. Then a job at Detroit’s Second City box office led to an unexpected invitation to audition for a role on its prestigious main stage. She got the job, and while it was a far cry from her beloved musical background, the training in improv was priceless. She built an even thicker skin and grew more comfortable on stage.
Craving more stability after she and her husband moved to the Chicago suburbs, Campos got a job working at Kinko’s. What felt like an inconsequential decision has turned out to be a sort of touchstone in her life. “That job was the gift that keeps on giving,” she says with a laugh. “All the time I tell people ‘I learned to do that at Kinko’s.’” Working with the public every day was an education in itself.
When her daughter was old enough, Campos was ready for more of a challenge and enrolled in library school at Dominican University. (That’s where she met Del Negro.) From there, it was a natural transition into professional storytelling, which Campos does now alongside her day job as a children’s librarian.
If you were lucky enough to go to Exchange Place at the National Storytelling Festival last year, you might remember Campos from her brief appearance telling a folk tale. It was her first time in Jonesborough, and the experience was electrifying.
“It was phenomenal,” she gushes. “It was just so cool. You see everybody doing their absolute best, which is such a great feeling.” She compares the experience to being in a play where everyone has to succeed for the production to flourish. “These people are knocking it out of the park. And you have to do a great job, too, not just so you can do well, but because the show itself demands it. The entire Festival demands it and it elevates everything that everybody is doing. When people are on their A-game, it just makes you want to be that much better. It’s a rush.”
Campos has amassed a broad and eclectic collection of influences over the years, and they all knock around her repertoire and recombine in interesting ways.
“I was having a conversation not that long ago about how you’re so often asked to say who you are and people want it in an easy-to-digest package,” she says. “They want to say, oh, you’re a Black woman. Or, oh, you’re a librarian. But there are all these intersections, all this multiplicity. I’m a Black woman who’s a librarian, who’s a nerd, who loves folklore, who doesn’t like to clean up or cook.
“But I don’t think it’s easy to separate all those things. All those thing are true, even if some of them feel like they’re opposites. I try really hard not to package myself in one way. What’s your image? I don’t have an image. I’m eight billion things and that’s okay.”
In Jonesborough, as a first-time featured teller, Campos will play her djembe drum and guitar. The latter instrument plays a starring role in her interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” (which she will be performing!) but songs factors into almost all of her work. “I use a lot of music throughout,” she says. “The improv bit, that mostly comes in through the audience interaction, which helps me feel comfortable going off script. Everything I’ve done feeds into how I tell stories — even Kinkos. I learned a lot about human nature.”
Campos will bring a blend of family stories, mixed-up fairy tales, and folk tales. Often, she combines different genres in unexpected ways. A story about her grandfather, for instance gets braided with a Scottish folk tale — and she’ll tell that story in Jonesborough, too.
Kelly is the latest featured teller in our New Voice series, a preview of the 53rd Annual National Storytelling Festival. You can read our profile of Amy Bluemel here. Join us for the Festival in Jonesborough October 2-4, 2026.