splitting a storytelling show with Irwin at Atlanta's 14th Street Playhouse. Leaving his guitar at home, "to stretch myself a bit," it was Irwin's first storytelling gig. His second album, released in 2004, consisted exclusively of stories. In 2005, Irwin appeared as a Featured New Voices Storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival (which Irwin refers to as the "Super Bowl" of storytelling). Storytelling as a performance form Prior to deciding to become a full-time storyteller, Irwin worked as a comedian "for a few minutes". However, Irwin came to see that the days of storytelling comedians had passed. Irwin also realized that his style of performance was at odds with the main venue available to comedians today: comedy clubs. (Irwin joking refers to comedy clubs as "evil, smelly places".) Some of his stories are an hour in length, and Irwin notes, "[t]here was a time when comedians could do that but they can't anymore because the clubs give them three minutes, and they are timing the laughs per minute." Using storytelling as a theatrical form allows Irwin to create more fully drawn characters and to explore darker subject matters as well. "Although I like to think of my storytelling as funny, I can have these serious moments. I'm not depending on the audience to laugh the whole time ... I hope there's content with the form." Irwin "takes the humor very seriously ... I remember being a little kid wondering why we laugh and what makes me laugh. I always was a class clown. I was always interested in what makes laughter happen and now I get to dig into the theory of it every day." Irwin thinks of himself as a fiction writer and refers to himself as a humorist, and states, "I call myself a humorist and storyteller instead of a comedian because I play in libraries and there's no three-drink minimum." Irwin's stories often reflect life in a small Southern town with recurring themes of growing up and growing old, the bonds of family, the complexities of racial relations in the Deep South, especially during the 1960s and the important art of the practical joke. Characters Many of Irwin's stories revolve around his fictional aunt, Dr. Marguerite Van Camp, whom he describes as being about 85 years old. She and her friends founded Southern White Old Lady Hospital in rural Georgia because (as Irwin explains in Marguerite's old