We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bonnie Pipkin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Bonnie, thanks for joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
For the majority of my adulthood, I’ve have had at least three jobs at a time. It’s the only way I really know how to exist. The years I spent living in New York City ingrained this way of life. I’ve always managed to piece it all together so that a creative existence is possible. Always avoiding stagnation. That said, I do have myself on a mailing list from Indeed.com that lets me know about the local full-time “regular jobs” that pay a certain amount of money, and every once in a while I am tempted to apply to something. The stability is tempting. The sameness. The insurance. The paid vacation days. But I’m just not sure I’m cut out for one thing. I don’t mind the overtime that comes along with the creative pursuit. Even though I do entertain these other jobs from time to time, the thought of it actually coming to be makes me itchy. It’s all a big balancing act – the work that’s going to pay the bills, the creative pursuits, the family, and then of course, rest, which I value a lot more than I used to. But ultimately it is the way of life that most fulfills me. Perhaps Bonfire will grow into some kind of institution that can employ people, me included, but even then, I would not stop writing novels. I still want to find my way back to teaching at a university as well. So, here I am getting all itchy again thinking about leaving any of those pieces of who I am behind to pursue one thing “full time.”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been about organizing an experience. From renegade theatrical performances in nontraditional spaces to elaborate themed dinner parties to road trip scavenger hunts across the country. A friend once told me that “being friends with you is constantly being convinced to do something a little out of your comfort zone,” and I took that as a high compliment. I grew up in Chico, California, and as soon as I graduated high school, went as far away as I could to New York City. In the twenty-one years away, I always filled my time with creative projects and endeavors. I’ve been in bands, built art spaces, produced theater, and thrown parties. I have always been a writer, and once I was in my thirties, I decided to pursue this more seriously. I received an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, signed with a literary agent, and got my first young adult novel, Aftercare Instructions, published in 2017. I also taught literature classes at Kean University for seven years, crafted and officiated original love story driven wedding ceremonies, and worked as a grant writer and fundraiser for the New York International Fringe Festival for nearly a decade. I had my hands in many pots. When my first child was born in 2018, my husband and I decided to move back to Chico to be around the support of family.
Once settled back in Chico, after a global pandemic and having a second baby, I had the itch to get busy again. I began writing a column in the local paper in 2021 and then applied for my city’s Arts Commission and was nominated and appointed in 2023. I started working on a new novel with Alloy Entertainment (in the works now… a domestic thriller!) but really wanted to get back into producing and community building.
I have always been a huge fan of the Moth and I used to attend a storytelling night in New York called Generation Women that always inspired me. Our world and communities are so divided, right now in particular it feels, and I wanted to do something that connected people. The simple act of listening to another person’s story creates empathy in the most powerful way. I was telling my friend, artist Ama Posey, that I wanted to host a multi-generational storytelling event in Chico, and she suggested I use her studio for the first one. This is when Bonfire was born.
Bonfire is a monthly multi-generational storytelling experience. Each month, I choose a different theme and then a storyteller from each age decade (teens, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s on up to 100’s). Representation of traditionally underrepresented voices is also key when curating the storytelling lineup. Each storyteller tells a ten-minute true and personal story. The name Bonfire is a play on both my name (Bonnie) and evocative of that feeling of sitting around a fire and telling stories, the ultimate human pastime.
The first Bonfire launched in June 2023 and as it was Pride month, we featured storytellers from the LGBTQIA+ community. The theme, fittingly, was Pride. The themes that followed have been Independence, The Things We Hide, The Rules We Make/The Rules We Break, Ghosts, We Are Family, and Endings. The event has caught on like wildfire. It has struck a chord in this community that has been very inspiring. We moved from Ama Posey’s studio into a raw space that will soon be the office for the nonprofit Butte Defense Equity Project, and finally have moved into the Chico Women’s Club, a community space with a storied history and a bigger capacity. Tickets sell out within the hour they go on sale, so we are looking for more ways to make sure that all people have access to this event. Moving forward this will mean presenting the same show multiple nights. We don’t want to grow the venue too much because that intimate feeling is important.
I teamed up with local theater director and writer, Dylan Latimer, who also grew up in Chico and lived in New York for a long time before recently finding his way back. We work with the storytellers for a month before they are on stage. We offer our guidance and support in the creation and presentation of their stories. We do group meetings with all the storytellers to brainstorm and create community within the group, and then individual sessions to really get to the heart of the stories each participant wants to tell.
We’re building community through this project in a way that people need right now. The experience connects and humanizes. It’s a beautiful thing to hear a story from a teen and an eighty-year-old in the same sitting. I am so proud of how this project reaches past cliques and social norms and brings people together of all ages and backgrounds to get cozy around the metaphorical fire. It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of and to watch grow bigger than I could have hoped.
Bonfire will soon go under the 501c3 umbrella of the Upstate Community Enhancement Foundation so that we can grow as an organization and start to offer more ways to connect community through art and storytelling. I can see us doing things like workshops and podcasts and more community engagement focused events. I’ve always put together shows and experiences, and it feels like this is the one that is going to take off and really make a difference. It already has. It’s still a lot of convincing people to do something a little out of their comfort zone, but that’s what I love to do!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
The biggest pivot of my life was when I had my first child and decided to leave New York City. I had a big world there in the city. I had done big things. I was set on a path I thought was it – writing and teaching and creating an occasional performance. My daughter completely shook that up. I like to break it down like this: My book came out in 2017, my daughter was born in 2018, I uprooted and moved across the county in 2019, I lived in a global pandemic in 2020, and I had a second child in 2021. Suddenly I was making babies instead of books, the world felt less stable, and I had a whole shift in my identity. I had to figure out who I was without New York and who I was as a mother. But I am who I am. I just had to find new ways to express myself creatively while fitting the new formation of family into the equation. And I feel like I really busted out of a cocoon of sorts ready to do big things in my community. The way I know how to do big things is by spectacles of creativity. That’s what Bonfire rose out of.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My goal with Bonfire is to create a space whereby sharing stories, we connect our community. Representation and inclusion are core values of Bonfire. The people on stage are not necessarily writers or performers (though both are welcome) but are humans sharing their truth. People who are willing to share their hearts and guts to a room full of other humans. In the sharing, we create empathy. It’s hard to explain what happens in the room the night of a Bonfire show. There’s a charge in the exchange of stories. It’s palpable. Powerful even. Magical. There are horrible things happening all over the world to entire populations, and I truly believe that if people would stop and take a moment to remember that we are all human and individuals who want to live and enjoy the simple joys of life, and truly listen to each other’s stories, that maybe we could stop hurting each other. When you know someone’s story of joy along with the story of trauma, there is a wholeness to the human experience. Storytelling is one of the oldest human traditions. And it has huge power to bring us together. Plus, we all love a full night of laughter and tears and everything in between.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @bonfirestorytellingchico
Image Credits
Kaia Anderson (for the headshot… all other photos are personal)