Lorefest Mission
Lorefest seeks to unite Bryan-College Station’s diverse cultural communities in the creative preservation and expansion of local folklore. Lorefest, our annual, public-facing festival, is a unique opportunity for Texas A&M students and scholars, local artists and business owners, family and friends, to explore and expand theirs and their neighbors’ cultural heritage through intercultural and multimedia storytelling in a variety of mediums and venues.
Furthermore, Lorefest seeks to...
Educate: Through project-based courses, community workshops by visiting artists (e.g. theater directors, filmmakers, puppeteers, effects artists, etc.), arts fairs, and academic symposiums, we provide students and local community members with the tools to engage in public scholarship and self-discovery. Learning about one’s home, discovering the wide-range of diverse elements that thrive in Bryan-College Station and the greater Brazos Valley region is vital to maintaining a living, growing Texan culture.
Preserve and Revitalize: Gathering folklore in all its forms, and providing future access to the local communities from which it arose through storage, digitization, and exhibition is essential to preserving the cultural heritage of Bryan-College Station. Furthermore, local/glocal cultures will be invigorated through new additions and creative reinterpretations of folkloric art and oral histories created by students and local artisans.
Create Performing and Visual Art: Festival performances offer a fantastic way to enlighten communities about the diverse cultures in their own backyard. At the same time, concerts, readings, and storytelling sessions provide opportunities for community members to express themselves and educate their peers through the language of cultural heritage, providing spaces for social commentary while forming (and strengthening) shared, cultural roots.
Bolster Communities and Local Business: Creating bridges between local communities allows all parties to help each other thrive. Lorefest wholeheartedly supports this effort by bringing together populations in College Station and Downtown Bryan, as well as artists, culture bearers, and residents from surrounding communities in central Texas and beyond.
Entertain: Lorefest, as well as being educational, empowering, expressive, and business-boosting, is also down-right fun!
The Lorefest Story
When Drs. Campbell and Connor first moved to College Station, they sort out Halloween events, outlets to discover local folktales, and generally sought out the local "scene" that highlighted the creative culture of the Bryan-College Station area. Strangely, most people they asked did not seem to think there was anything of the sort to be found. Many of their students had not even travelled from College Station to Bryan, less than 5 miles away and basically the same town as the one in which they lived and studied.
They decided to do something about this situation. First of all there was plenty of cultural things happening in the area, but there did not seem to be enough communication or publicity about these aspects of the local area - people effectively did not know things outside their immediate circles existed! Furthermore, the area is rich with folklore, spooky tales, and a plethora of communities whose culture shape Bryan and College Station.
The mission, then, became how to bring all this together and give the communities and students a means to engage with each other, produce creative works, and bridge the towns, business, people, and cultures that are BCS. Thus Lorefest was born!
Students from various classes (initially in the Performance Studies and Music classes) at Texas A&M University were invited to research local folklore and use that research to present something creative - a reinterpretation, a new version of these stories, something visual, aural, textual, dramatic - anything that they wanted that would respectfully engage with and educate both the community and students via the local/glocal folklore.
To date, Lorefest has seen a film festival, puppet performances and walkabouts, "campfire" style storytelling, live music, radio dramas and podcasts, fashion design, musical instrument construction and performances, dance, theatre, and wrestling, all inspired by local and glocal Bryan-College Station folklore. The shows and presentations are made available free to the public and take place at the end of October. Furthermore, there is also an annual Lorefest Folklore Conference that offers an academic and performative outlet for those who want to take the research related to local folklore to a traditional scholarly setting. Additionally, research gathered by the students is currently being added to a Lorefest database that will be fully searchable and made available to the public soon. The first full engagement with the new database will result in a folktale book of local BCS stories curated from tales in the Lorefest collection, which will be published in time for Lorefest 2026.
Meet The Team
Dr. Matthew A. Cambpell
Organizer
Dr. Campbell created Lorefest with a sense of community, education, and creativity in mind. His interest in folklore fueled the origin of Lorefest and led to the realization of the annual events as well as the collection of folklore that is being compiled in the Lorefest database, not to mention, his moustache has a series of folktales of its own...
Dr. William Klugh Connor III
Organizer
Cryptids, ghosts, supernatural beings (and the sounds/noises they make) are Dr. Connor's middle name (so to speak). A healthy interest in otherworldly creatures, electronic devices designed to interact with said beings, and an unyielding excitement for performances related to all this madness makes him a viable partner in paranormal folktale activities.
Dr. Joseph Lopez
Organizer
Dr. Lopez, aka the Great Facilitator, brings a solid base to the team and assists with getting things done and making things happen. That is not to say that Joey is not interested in folklore fun, though! Being a local Latino man whose own family is deeply rooted in Texas lore, he is fully interested and dedicated to returning the culturally rich tales to the communities from which they originated in creative and educational ways.
Dr. Katayoun Torabi
Ghost Walk Organizer
Dr. Torabi is our in-house ghost specialist. She has been investigating paranormal activity in Texas for years, is a member of the Ghost Girls, and has loads of folklore and spooky tales of her own to add to the local cannon of stories! Who better to lead the students to develop their seasonally scary presentations in Downtown Bryan?
Dr. Rich Cooper
Folklore Conference Organizer
When he is not deep in the throes of writing or teaching in the English program, Dr. Cooper brings his outstanding scholarly mind to the aide of Lorefest by assisting with the organization of the folklore conference. Each year, He (and Dr. Harris) field submissions, arrange panels, and bring the academic discourse to life on the final day of the event. Lorefest would decidedly not be the same without his tremendous efforts.
Dr. Jason Harris
Folklore Conference Organizer
Dr. Harris is our resident folklore specialist, who has written books on folklore as well as introduced his own folktales into the body of stories we enjoy as a community. His help organizing the conference and bringing new life to the Lorefest events in invaluable.
Dr. Brian Tarpley
Folklore Database Programmer
The root of Lorefest is its collection of stories. What the students gather, what the community shares, and what becomes the sources for the creativity behind the events is all collected, organized, and made searchable by the programming genius of Dr. Tarpley. Soon to be added to the Lorefest website, this indispensable tool for research and community-building is all made possible because of his hard work.