Our Mission
People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos (P&S/GyC) is dedicated to opening doors to literature for new audiences. Through oral readings and rigorous discussions of enduring short stories, we invite participants to find fresh understandings of themselves, of others, and of the world.
Sarah Hirschman
Founder
Our History
Sarah Hirschman was born in Lithuania into a Russian Jewish family and educated in France and the United States. A reader fluent in several languages, she was always interested in the reception of literature by groups of different cultural backgrounds. After a five year stay in Colombia and work with urban community groups and development projects, she started People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos in Spanish in 1972 in Massachusetts. She developed a methodology that has effectively connected more than 40,000 lives to literature, with trained coordinators conducting programs in both English and Spanish in various parts of the United States as well as in Argentina.
Read more about our founder, Sarah Hirschman’s, award-winning life and the history of People & Stories in this Town Topics article.
Purchase a copy of our her book:
PEOPLE AND STORIES / GENTE Y CUENTOS: Who Owns Literature? Communities Find Their Voice Through Short Stories (note: proceeds from book purchases do not directly benefit P&S/GyC nor its programs)
Click below to watch an impactful video from our archives.
In 1981, the project expanded to include programs in Florida, Texas, New York, and Puerto Rico. The program in English, People & Stories, began in 1986 in New Jersey, and the project became a non-profit corporation in 1993. People & Stories continued to expand by serving regional audiences with programs throughout New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.
In 2005, People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos developed Crossing Borders with Literature, a program model that invites suburban participants to join programs, forging connections that cross municipal, socioeconomic, racial, and cultural lines. In 2010, in concert with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project expanded to include Story Talk/Cuentos y Plática, a youth initiative that reached at-risk young adults across the country, including in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Washington. And in 2015, we initiated a new NEH project called Reading Deeply in Community/Leyendo a Fondo, en Comunidad, working nationally with librarians to take the program to sex trafficking victims, Latino library patrons, adults in re-entry, enrollees in adult literacy classes, and low-income seniors—among a wide range of participants—in California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and beyond.
Donate today!
Help us offer our literature programs to participants who have had limited opportunity to study the humanities.
Here is an award-winning video from 2016 produced by New Jersey State of the Arts.
Note that while our Mission and trademarked methodology are unchanged, updated information on our
current programs, staff, and program partners are available throughout this website.
Today, our programs continue to reach youth, adults, and seniors in diverse social service agencies—including residential treatment facilities, prisons, homeless shelters, adult education programs, libraries, senior centers, and alternative schools—on local, regional, and national levels.
