Braden Storytelling Grant

Echoes Across Oceans by Rosina Lin

This story is about how traditional Chinese music travels across time, distance, and migration, carried by the people who choose to keep it alive. Through the stories of two musicians and producer Rosina Lin's own journey as a listener, it explores memory, identity, and what it means to belong. Original scoring by Rosina Lin.
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project.
Interviews
Yifan — Pipa player and software engineer based in Seattle
George — Dizi player and music producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area
 
Music Acknowledgments
Music and sound elements from Apple Loops and Freesound.org;
Original scoring by Rosina Lin

California’s Promise by Rani Chor

Why do Cambodian American stories disappear—both from family albums and from school curricula? In this documentary, producer Rani Chor follows one community’s effort to reclaim its history, asking what happens to identity, power, and belonging when a people’s past is left untaught. In California’s first model curriculum for Cambodian Americans, we find these lost stories.
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project.
Interviewees:
Ratha Kim, owner of Rajana Threads
Bandaul Chansy, Kindergarten Teacher, Long Beach Unified
Youk Chhang, Executive Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia(DC-Cam)
Marika Manos, Project Lead, History/Social Science Manager of OCDE
Joshua Brown, Project Manager, Model Curriculum, OCDE
Matthew O’Donnell, Program Specialist on Cambodian American Studies ModelCurriculum, OCDE
Music Credits:
Cambodian Rock and Roll -- Yol Aularong + Tuk - Sou Slarp Kroam Kombut Srey (Rather Die Under the Woman's Sword)
Cambodian American Studies Curriculum: https://camodelcurricula.ucdavis.edu/cambodian-american-studies 

Livermush: A Story of What We Carry by Ana Gray

This episode follows livermush from producer Ana Gray's family farm to a North Carolina factory, told through family memory, labor, and survival. What begins as a search for a childhood food becomes a story about inheritance, care, and quiet resistance.
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project.
Music:
Free Music Archies
Eirik finbak, Dear Whiskey 
Youtube Studio Audio Library
Chris Haugen, Soul Food 
Alge, make the visible invisible
freesound.org
Credits:
Phyllis Hunter Bracket and Louise Rulfed and the Hunter Livermush family
Macy Jones 
Martha Jones, my Aunt Mothe
The SSP team, with a special Shout out to Dawn J Fraser

The Invisible Forest? Protecting the Brazilian Atlantic Forest by Alice Heiman

What does it take to conserve a forest? Most people think about the Amazon Rainforest when they think of Brazil. But in fact, most Brazilians live in the Atlantic Forest. Despite being a patchwork of what it once was, the Atlantic Forest is incredibly resilient, biodiverse, and crucial to life. In this episode, we get to hear from some of the people restoring and protecting this forest before it is too late.
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project.
Interviewees:
Diego Igawa Martinez, MSc.
Project Analyst for SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation
Luísa Genes, MSc.
Scientific Director at Refauna / PhD candidate in Ecology at Stanford University.
James Dietz, PhD.
Founding Director, Save the Golden Lion Tamarin (SGLT)
Ben Beck, PhD.
Founding Director, Save the Golden Lion Tamarin (SGLT)
Audio Credits:
Music from MixKit and Blue Dot Sessions.
Additional sound provided by Xeno Canto:
Golden Lion Tamarin Audio. Ricardo José Mitidieri, XC960597. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/960597. Under CC BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).
Green-barred Woodpecker. Bobby Wilcox, XC388433. Accessible at https://xeno-canto.org/388433. Under CC BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).
Guira Cuckoo. Bobby Wilcox, XC328779659. Accessible at https://xeno-canto.org/391932. Under CC BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).
Saffron Toucanet. Daniel Mello, XC530230. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/530230 under CC BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

My Mother’s Folklore by Kristine Pashin

After her mother’s passing, Kristine abandoned the Bulgarian folk dancing she’d grown up with. Now, through conversations with dancers across generations, she’s searching for what she lost — and questioning what it really means to belong to a culture.
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project.
Music:
Vocals from Maria Belekova, singing a mix of traditional Bulgarian folklore works from different regions
Interviewees:
Sonia Kirova, President of Ripni Kalinke Cultural Center
Ginny & Alan Snyder, dancers in Ripni Kalinke group
Sonya Koltchev, Bulgarian-American student at Royal Veterinary College in London
Yuliyan Yordanov, Bulgarian folklore teacher and choreographer
Konstantin Marinov, Founder of Festival “Vereya” and accompanying dance ensemble

Story Holders: Speaking the Multi-Generational Silence of Japanese American Incarceration by West Mulholland

Producer West Mulholland explores generational silence within the Japanese American community. A holder of heritage and a carrier of stories that are not his own, Mulholland searches for what it means to narrate an inherited silence near the desert fences of Manzanar, an American Incarceration Camp and living National Historic Site.
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project. 
Interviewees
Bryan Watanabe, adult son of Manzanar survivor Tsuneo “Tom” Watanabe
Sarah Bone, Manzanar veteran park ranger
Natalie Tokita, UCLA undergraduate student, granddaughter of Manzanar survivors & Arnold Maeda Manzanar Pilgrimage Grant Recipient
Music
Sound effects: ambient noises collected at Manzanar, August 2025
Taiko drums; Kyodo Taiko (UCLA) at 2023 Manzanar Pilgrimage
References
National Park Service: Manzanar: National Historic Site California
JANM: Japanese American National Museum
Densho
“Man Walking With Grandson,” Densho Digital Archives, The Dorothea Lange Collection, Public Domain, 1942.
Special Thanks
Bryan and Lynda Watanabe, Sarah Bone, Natalie Tokita, Manzanar National Park Service, and the Stanford Storytelling Project.

An American Icon by Alana Esposito

In this episode, producer Alana Esposito travels to Montana to learn more about the iconic American Buffalo and its complicated history in Yellowstone National Park. 
Produced with support from the Braden Storytelling Grant and the Stanford Storytelling Project.
 
Music from BlueDotSessions:
Pigpaddle Creek
Vengeful
On Early Light
Sprig Leaf
 
Interviewees:
Román Sanchez
Dallas Gudgell
Justine Sanchez
Mike Mease
Kasi Crocker

Applying for a Braden Storytelling Grant? Here's what our 2024 grantees want you to know.

Each year, the Stanford Storytelling Project awards Braden Grants to support the research, writing, and production of audio documentaries. The aim of the program is to help students learn how to tell powerful, research-driven stories based on testimony they gather through interviews, research, or oral history archives. Grantees receive up to $2,500, along with teaching, training, and mentorship for the duration of the project.
Here's what the 2023 Grantees had to say about their experience.

Hillbilly Highway by Viva Donohoe

How Patsy Cline shifted the country music industry--and a whole country's idea of femininity.
Interviewees:Ellis NasserMargaret JonesSources:Country Music USA by Bill C. MaloneCreating Country Music by Richard A. PetersonSelling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk by Jane E.Song Catchers, Ballad Makers, and New Social Historians: The Historiography of Appalachian MusicMusic by Patsy Cline & Blue Dot Sessions