From September 9 through 15, 1979, WNYC sponsored a new festival that brought storytellers together with anthropologists and folklorists who focused on the narrative arts. Following its tradition of station-sponsored festivals, the weeklong celebration included broadcasts and live events around the city. The broadcasts consisted of six 90-minute documentary programs produced by Gail Pellet with assistance from Diane Wolkstein (whose weekly Stories From Many Lands was heard on WNYC from 1968 to 1980). They included stories by Jay O'Callahan, Laura Simms, Rabbi Schlomo Karlbach, Diane Wolkstein, Kathryn Wyndham, Gioia Timpanelli, Julius Lester, and others.

Meanwhile, the live events showcased storytellers from all over the United States telling tales in locations around the city —including the Staten Island Ferry, Central Park, an Irish pub, City Hall Park, the Cloisters, the Bronx Botanical Garden and even the Welbilt Electronic and Die Corporation factory in the Bronx. The series concluded by exploring "the storyteller's role historically and in our own time; the ideas, experiences, and personalities of the storyteller as shaman, poet, healer, joker, messenger."

Describing one of the festival’s events in Central Park, the New Yorker's “Talk of the Town” correspondent told readers that its stories and storytellers, like the audience that day, were a diverse lot:

Some had musical voices; some spoke harshly; some stood still with clasped hands, and some threw themselves into every character in their tales. Jackie Torrence, from North Carolina, always had just the right voice for her characters, --misers, ghosts, demons, lovely maidens, stalwart younger sons, croaking frogs. Hote’ Casella, of Cherokee ancestry, was perhaps the most handsome of the storytellers. She is a concert singer --mezzo-- who sings and tells the stories of American Indian songs.

In submitting the series for consideration to the Peabody Award committee, WNYC wrote that this honoring of the story included "all types of stories, myths, legends, faerie, and folk tales, as well as conversations with storytellers, scholars, collectors, and lovers, aired at various times throughout the day and evening."