Congratulations to Matt McDunnell, who was named the winner of our 2025 Grand Slam - the first person to do so twice! Matt competed with the other winners from this year's monthly open mic story slams and earned the title of Best Storyteller in York. The theme for the evening was Oops!, and Matt (left) is pictured here with our emcee and 2016 Grand Slam champ, Brad Jennings.

Thank you to the Appell Center for the Performing Arts, who have hosted all ten of our annual Grand Slams in the beautiful Capitol Theatre.

Thank you to everyone who showed up this year to listen, and everyone who bravely put their names into the hat to share stories.

2025 has been our tenth season of live storytelling events. Since 2016, we’ve welcomed nearly 7,000 attendees and have had more than 1,040 names in the hat. That’s more than 1,040 true, personal stories shared with neighbors – friends, acquaintances, and strangers – in the safe space York Story Slam provides. Storytelling is a wonderful way to get to know others in your community; to uncover things we have in common and to recognize and better understand our differences. We are honored to provide a platform for people to share true, personal stories.

We won’t have a story slam event in December – we will be putting the finishing touches on next year’s series. We’ll continue to host our monthly events on the third Tuesday of the month in 2026, but our location will change, as the Hangar is moving to the first floor of the Grotto Community Center at 17 East Philadelphia Street in the heart of downtown York.

Check back soon to see videos of all the stories from the Grand Slam.