Truths We Tell

HILARY TRUDELL is a facilitator, producer, and educator with over fifteen years experience in the field of public service and the arts. She specializes in community engagement, arts education, and providing a platform for storytelling and advocacy work. Hilary currently works as the Director of Local Programming and Regional Outreach at the Clinton School of Public Service, leading first-year students through their first field work experience. Hilary has developed curricula on the topics of team building, community development, and advocacy through storytelling and is thrilled to be providing a platform to bring more Arkansas voices to the stage. Her past work includes supporting the production of Broadway-caliber shows at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, producing the Student Playwrights Project at Arena Stage, and supporting steering committees of volunteer leaders through the Human Rights Campaign. In 2017, Hilary founded The Yarn, whose mission is to amplify voices, build understanding, and create a space for human connection. As of August 2021, The Yarn is entering its fifth season, and Hilary and her team have produced over twenty shows. Since 2015, Hilary has personally coached over 250 people in efforts to help them share their stories succinctly, effectively, and with impact. In 2018, she also founded the ACANSA Ten-Minute Play Showcase, which she will usher into its fourth season in March 2022. A board member of the ACANSA Arts Festival, Hilary is a strong believer in leveraging stories as catalysts for community building, education, and social change.

Share Your Truth

Representing The Yarn's first twenty live and virtual shows, the thirty-seven storytellers in this anthology share powerful truths on diverse themes including family, racism, coming out, sexual assault, mental health, failure, resilience, death, and love. Among dozens of lived experiences of real Arkansans originally shared on stage, you'll meet a psychiatry resident whose own institutional stay has led to advocacy throughout his career, a former marine whose divorce was followed by shared custody of two hairless cats, an entrepreneur who built a greeting card empire from the desire to see herself represented, and a woman whose homelessness taught her how to look up.


Curated from the show's first four years of productions under the direction of co- founder and producer Hilary Trudell, this anthology expands The Yarn's mission to amplify voices, build understanding, and create space for human connection.


Storytellers: Molly Reed, Meosha "Yosh" Howard, Spencer Lucker, Justin Sarlo, Anna Kimmell, Lorenzo Lewis, Rick Owen, David Fischman, Rhonna-Rose Akama-Makia, Kevin Hunt Sr., Marck Beggs, Jennifer Cobb, LaTasha Moore, Rick Chandler, Sara Brown, Crystal C. Mercer, Robyn Rektor, Guy Choate, Andy Vaught, Ryan D. Davis, Emily Wernsdorfer Hooker, Jason Woods, Ryan McGeeney, Lynne Fay, Glendaliz Torres, Bailey Gambill, Patricia Ashanti, Chauncey Holloman Pettis, Mackenzi Davis, Rah Howard, Justin Booth, Eliza Borné, Rev. Dr. Denise Donnell, Dr. Gloria Richard-Davis, Andrea Toomer, Nicole Hellthaler, Karen Hayes, and Mark Hotchkiss.