Larry Smith Email & Phone Number

Oakland, California, United States

I'm a longtime member of Sidebar and recently joined the team to help deepen connection and community for Sidebar's awesome members — driven people who want to grow professionally and engage with a group of curious, passionate leaders.

San Francisco Bay Area

With a single tweet in 2006, “Can you describe your life in six words?,” I launched The Six-Word Memoir Project and began my transformation from a journalist to the creator of a communication tool for self-expression, community building, and connection in companies, nonprofits, classrooms, houses of faith, and almost anywhere people gather. I’ve worked with teams at Dell, Levi’s, ESPN, Snap, JPMorgan Chase, Turner Global Inclusion, Netflix, Shutterfly, Nationwide, Intuit, Autodesk, Dress for Success, Zen Hospice Project, Mid-Ohio Food Bank, among other companies and nonprofits. The goal is always the same: employ short-form storytelling as a tool that can be immediately implemented to increase focus and create connection, inclusion, and belonging among employees, as well as reinforce the mission, vision, and values of the organization. My storytelling approach provides an accessible, positive, and genuinely enjoyable way for employees to celebrate each other and hone the story of their work to the outside world.See my speaker site, www.sixwordsmith.com, for more information and a short teaser reel.

Various

With a single tweet in 2006, “Can you describe your life in six words?,” I launched The Six-Word Memoir Project and created a communication tool for self-expression, community building, and connection in companies, nonprofits, classrooms, houses of faith, arts festivals, and almost anywhere people gather. I’ve worked with teams at Dell, Levi’s, ESPN, Snap, JPMC, Turner Global Inclusion, Netflix, Nationwide, Dress for Success, among others. The goal: employ short-form storytelling as a tool that can be immediately implemented to increase focus and create connection, encourage inclusion and belonging, and reinforce the mission, vision, and values of the organization. I've published ten books of Six-Word Memoirs, including "Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Immigration, Identity & Coming to America," a collaboration with ABC's “Fresh Off the Boat,” and "Things Don't Need to Be Complicated: Illustrated Six-Word Memoirs by Students of the World," with TED Books. I’ve also helped brands become better storytellers, working with companies like Honest Tea where customers were invited to share Six-Word Memoirs — with a selection of submission appearing on 1 million bottle caps, offering the old “aphorisms on bottle caps” a fresh spin while also building brand loyalty. With Mini Cooper, we created an award-winning campaign called “The Best Test Drive – Ever” which invited Mini Cooper’s audience to use the creative constraint of six words to dream up their personal Mini Cooper adventure. In an initiative with The Broadway League, Tony award nominees wrote their six words on the feeling of being nominated that were compiled into a video shared across social media ahead of the award ceremony.My work as an innovator in the storytelling movement has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, Edutopia, NPR, and The BBC. Oprah Magazine noted, “Larry Smith is on a quest to spark creativity in everyone.”

Sausalito, California, United States

I help guide content strategy for StoryMade Studio, a boutique storytelling studio that works with individuals and organizations on narrative strategies that help leaders and brands authentically grow their reach through thought leadership and the intelligent uses of metrics and data. Clients include Mayo Clinic, Grace Cathedral, TED Books, and ShareCare.

United States

One of the great pleasures of my life was meeting Sara Abou Rashed, a 17-year-old Palestinian-Syrian-American refugee. She was one of 20 teens who attended my storytelling workshop at The Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. That night, she shared her Six-Word Memoir: “Escaped war, war never escaped me.” In the years that followed, Sara and I collaborated to turn those six words into a much longer story about her life in the form of a one-woman show. That show, “A Map of Myself: A 70-Minute, One-Woman Show on Immigration, Language, History, and Home" ran for 22 performances in Columbus, Chicago, and Philadelphia and was invited to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before the pandemic ended its run. Together — GenXer and GenYer, Jew and Muslim — we created something special not only for the audience but for Sara and I.

Various

When I moved to Columbus, Ohio in 2015, I was immediately struck by the city’s enthusiasm, community, and openness to starting conversations about who and what the city was and where it was going. With this in mind, I received grants from The Columbus Foundation, Greater Columbus Arts Council as well as corporate sponsorship and created an initiative that challenged the people of Columbus to tell the story of their city, six words at a time. At arts festivals, inside classrooms and community centers, in public spaces and company meetings, Six in the City engaged and connected the people of Columbus and helped them develop a collective identity.

United States

SMITH Magazine (smithmag.net), co-founded by Larry Smith and Tim Barkow in 2006, was a pioneer of user-generated content. SMITH was the original home of the Six-Word Memoir project and launched many projects online and in print. Among our books:• The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure, edited by Larry Smith (Harper Perennial). • A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a serialized non-fiction graphic novel conceived by Larry Smith and written by Josh Neufeld. This book retold the stories of seven people who escaped and survived Hurricane Katrina (Pantheon Books).• Shooting War, a groundbreaking graphic novel set in a dystopian near-future done in collaboration with Anthony Lappé (Grand Central Publishing).

Greater New York City Area

I was a senior editor for ESPN The Magazine in 2000 and a contributing writer in the years that followed. My specialty was experiential journalism — racing a demolition derby races, shadowing a college mascot, embedding myself with Philadelphia sports fans, and more. After leaving ESPN as a FTE, I continued to work as a contract employee in a hybrid role as a writer and editor as well as editorial liaison for branded marketing initiatives including the annual ESPY awards.

I edited stories for Men's Journal, serving at the pleasure of Wenner Media, and bringing home Us Weekly — just down the hall — for all my friends.

New York, Ny

Assigned and edited stories for a magazine I liked to call "the people's Wired," as we helped non-techies make sense of the rapidly changing web, tech and gadget world during the go-go, first-tech boom (staff retreats in Hawaii!). I conceived and edited a number of new sections and worked in every aspect from creation to publication of this 1 million+ circulation print magazine from Ziff Davis. Putting together our issue right after the 9/11 attacks was one of the most amazing experiences I've had as an editor, working with an incredible group of colleagues at an intense time.

I was on the launch team of the men's magazine P.O.V., serving under Randall Lane (now EIC of Forbes) — conceiving sections and columns, writing features and cover lines, and part of a wild ride at a magazine that Adweek named "Start Up of the Year." I was also the editor-in-chief of P.O.V.'s sister publication, EGG, a quarterly nightlife magazine.

San Francisco Bay Area

Early in my writing career one of my first published pieces, an overwrought essay in an alternative weekly about being a misunderstood GenXer, was illustrated by the then-unknown Dave Eggers. He invited me to be part of the launch team of his new magazine, "Might," self-described as the "the damn brain picnic for the young and restless." My time at Might — the stories I wrote, the people I met, and the things I learned about creating something from scratch with little money and large amounts of conviction — infused and inspired my professional life.

San Jose, Ca

We were like Citysearch and Yelp..... before Citysearch and Yelp. A great introduction, working with Dan Pulcrano, to a new online world, one that was about to change everything and infuse my own career with an important spirit.