FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Her stories have been compared to ocean waves with the power to lift and carry an audience on an unforgettable journey of heart and mind.

That’s a big job for even the greatest of tales and tellers, but listening to Wanda Johnson can make you a believer.

She will be joined in January by other storytellers who’ve honed their craft in school classrooms, senior centers, public libraries and church pulpits at the Gulf Coast Storytelling Festival at St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Fairhope.

In telling why she cares about the ancient art of oral storytelling in an age of smart phones, Johnson speaks with a songful voice that can soothe, make you think, tug at your heart and have you laughing, all in a few minutes.

And before you know it, you’ve arrived at that place where you both feel and understand her story.

“When I was growing up, people who were master storytellers in my community may not even have gone to school, but they were wise people and taught me many lessons through stories,” Johnson said during a break this week as a library associate at the West Regional Branch of the Mobile Public Library. “Saturday night I had an unexpected thing to happen. I was asked to come in and tell a story at the homeless center in Mobile. It was very touching for me to see that I was able to bring a moment of joy and connection with that group. Stories teach us lessons of the past and give us hope for the future.”

Johnson’s ability to weave experiences of growing up in Prichard into moving tales of family and community life has captivated audiences young and old throughout the state and region, earning her a reputation as one of the South’s best storytellers.

Sponsored by the Daphne-based StoryCollector project and Gulf Coast Trikke, the Jan. 8 storytelling festival will also feature local storytellers such as Fairhope’s Jo Graven, a retired elementary school reading teacher; storybook author Sherryl Lynn Chavarria; and Rev. James Dane of St. Thomas by the Sea Catholic Church in Orange Beach.

“It’s an evening for family enjoyment at no cost and to learn of the art of storytelling and to encourage others to become storytellers,” Graven said. “I enjoy sharing history and family life through stories. When a local group heard me one time, they were totally floored that so much energy and exuberance came out of this quiet little lady.”

As an educator, Graven learned that “90 percent of the problem with children in school is they have no confidence in their ability, and once they learn they can do something like tell a story in front of the class, their confidence improves dramatically.”

She will tell one of her favorite stories called “Memory Quilt” at the festival, about a woman who left an unforgettable memory in the lives of the neighborhood community where she lived.

“Stories are a kind of DNA written into our hearts,” says Barry Little, owner of Nomad Studio in Daphne, who founded the nonprofit Gulf Coast Storytelling organizaton in 2003 with Johnson’s help, after recording her first storytelling CD. “When you see a storyteller connect with an audience, that’s when you really get it, and then you understand why it’s so powerful and important.”

GCS sponsored a festival in 2004, but the hurricanes of those years and their aftermath put the group’s plans on hold, and the January festival is the first major effort to revive their work.

An initial storytelling event at Barnes and Noble in Spanish Fort in October also launched the group’s StoryCollector project, which provides an easy way to record family stories and archive them to develop a permanent oral history of the area.

“I think it is important for everyone’s family stories to be recorded and to do it soon,” said Little, whose Nomad Studio provides a professional venue for such recordings. “Part of our problem as a culture is that we’ve lost many of the valuable lessons of our shared history. When that happens, we forget where we came from. Learning about one’s past through stories recorded by family members can restore that lost history.”

Johnson also believes that stories passed down through families and discovered in one’s life then retold to others can reconnect communities and build a shared history.

“Today with all of the technology that we have, there is this idea that we are able to connect with people across the world,” she says. “But it seems to me that in some ways we are becoming very disconnected because we don’t talk to one another. I think storytelling can be that connector.”

The Gulf Coast Storytelling Festival is free and will happen at 7 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 8, at St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Fairhope.

For more information, contact Little at 251-626-9997, or visit www.gulfcoaststorytelling.org and www.storycollector.org.