Celebrate Native American Heritage Month withaward-winning Choctaw storyteller and author Tim Tingle during his performance Saturday, November 16 at 4:00 p.m. at the George W. Hawkes Central Library, 101 E. Abram Street.

Bring the family to hear captivating tales performed in traditional style at 4:00 p.m. Prior to his performance, he invites adults and teens to a writing workshop at 2:30 p.m.

Tingle is an Oklahoma Choctaw whose great-great grandfather, John Carnes, walked the Trail of Tears in 1835. His paternal grandmother attended a series of rigorous Indian boarding schools in the early 1900's. Responding to a scarcity of Choctaw lore, he initiated a search for historical and personal narrative accounts. He retraced the Trail of Tears to Choctaw homelands in Mississippi and began recording stories of tribal elders. His family experiences and these interviews with fellow Choctaws in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma . over two hundred hours and counting . are the basis of his most important writings.

Each year, Tingle performs a Choctaw story before Chief Gregory Pyle's State of the Nation Address, a gathering that attracts over ninety thousand tribal members and friends. He spoke at the Library of Congress and presented his first performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 2011. He has been a featured author and storyteller at"Choctaw Days," a celebration honoring the Oklahoma Choctaws at the National Museum of the American Indian, a wing of the Smithsonian. He has been a featured storyteller at festivals in 42 states, including five appearances at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. In June of 2013, he was featured at Ireland's Cape Clear International Storytelling Festival.

Tingle received his Master's Degree in English Literature at the University of Oklahoma in 2003, with a focus on American Indian studies. While teaching freshmen writing courses and completing his thesis,"Choctaw Oral Literature," Tingle wrote his first book, Walking the Choctaw Road.It was selected by both Oklahoma and Alaska as Book of the Year in the"One Book, One State" program. The Anchorage Daily News sponsored him on a two-week tour of Alaskan cities, including remote towns accessible only by sled and frozen rivers in the nine-month winter.

Hispanic folk tales and Texas ghost stories are also of interest to Tingle, and he has traveled extensively in Mexico and Texas collecting this folklore. In recognition of distinctive literary achievement, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2012.