Twist and Turns Anthology

In "Twists and Turns," 50 writers share powerful, touching, and amusing stories about inflection points in their lives, times when chance and choice, misfortune, failure, and grace intervened to redirect them onto a new path, to awaken them to new potentials or to lead them to accept what they could not control. Some are light-hearted stories of getting away with something. Others, startling reminders of possibilities that might yet befall any of us. All help encourage a shared human empathy for one another as we make our ways through this world along and against all the twists and turns that lead and confound us. "Twists and Turns" in the seventh collection in the Personal Story Publishing Project series, gathering stories since 2018 of 750-800 words from individual writers to share their stories resonating with a stated theme. For this collection, writers share stories about "Twists and Turns"—inflection points in life by choice, happenstance, misfortune, failure, and grace.

The collection includes 50 stories by 50 writers from Florida to California with over half from North Carolina including writers from Albemarle, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, East Bend, Flat Rock, Fuquay-Varina, Hayesville, Henderson, Kings Mountain, Linville, Mills River, Old Fort, Oxford, Ramseur, Snow Camp, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem. Through 50 short stories, you share in the experiences of writers—both new voices and seasoned storytellers. They skillfully share tales from their lives, causing us to consider our own experiences, our own stories of life changes by choice and chance that intervene and put us onto new paths. As each new path leads to yet another, we see the challenges of these continuing redirections as the inevitable creators of yet more stories and chapters we might one day tell. Listen to “6-minute Stories” podcast to hear stories from all seven anthologies.

Randell Jones is a writer, speaker, podcaster, and publisher in Winston-Salem, NC. He created the Personal Story Publishing Project in 2018 and the companion podcast, “6-minute Stories” in 2019 to encourage other writers. He is an award-winning writer about the pioneer and Revolutionary War eras and North Carolina history. For 13 years, he served as an invited member of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council, speaking to audiences around the state and the South. In 2013, the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution conferred upon him its national History Award Medal. During 25 years, he has written 100+ history-based guest columns for the Winston-Salem Journal. Learn more here.