Sheila Stark Phillips ’56 would rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth. It’s a preference that served her well in October, when she represented the South Central United States at the biggest confabulator’s conference in the country.

She didn’t have to climb a tree, but she did have to travel to tiny Jonesborough, Tenn., where the three-day 2005 National Storytelling Festival was held, and lie her head off.

When it comes to fibbing, Phillips has gone professional. In April 2005 she won the Faulk Award, the highest achievement in storytelling in the Southwest, from the Tejas Storytelling Association. At the recent festival, she was one of only six invited.

Whether onstage aboard an ocean liner or at festivals across the South, Phillips is a natural-born spellbinder. Karen Morgan, former executive director of the Tejas Storytelling Association, calls her “a master storyteller and champion liar and amazingly versatile. In one story she may have a thousand people laughing as hard as they’ve ever laughed.” But Phillips can also tell “remarkable and poignant stories of past neighbors and growing up.”

Like the best storytellers, Phillips loves the contradictions and craziness in being human. But she got the bug for “telling” when she worked at the Houston Zoo and includes animals as subjects in her stories, too. But that, as they say, is another story. Let her tell you.