In the spring of 2014, Bill decided to give oral storytelling a try. He had spent most of his life working alone in the woods, talking mostly to trees, and figured it was time to branch out. He entered five Moth Story Slams in Burlington, winning three. He also won The Vermont Pubic Radio’s 2014 Listeners Appreciation Party Story Slam Competition.
“Bill Torrey is a storyteller too pure to be real and too funny to be believed. Spend a little time with him, though, and you realize he’s that one in a million person who has lived his life fully—felt it, loved it, and knows how to talk about it. Great storytellers and great stories don’t always find each other. With Bill Torrey it’s a head-on collision.”
—Tom Bodett, author, humorist, radio guy
In 2015 he decided that since he can’t dance and it was too wet to plow, he would write a book. It’s titled The Ta Ta Weenie Club , published by Green Writers Press (www.greenwriterspress.com), and is a collection of 21 humorously entertaining stories about the life of a young boy in 1960’s rural Vermont.
While Bill was resting from all that writing, he entered five Extempo Storytelling Competitions, winning three (www.extempovt.com). He won the 2015 December Moth Story Slam to boot. And in May of 2016, he crossed the state line and won New York’s North Country Public Radio’s Black Fly Story Slam and thus received the coveted Golden Fly Swatter. In June of 2017, Bill was called up to the major leagues when the Moth Main Stage recruited him to perform with four other storytellers from around the world at the prestigious Wilbur Theater in Boston. Bill wowed the sold-out crowd of 1200 with his story of his challenging life spent in the woods of Vermont.
Bill has performed by invitation at The Flynn Theater in Burlington, The Marquis Theater in Middelbury, The Latchis Theater in Brattelboro, Middlebury College, and the Vermont State House.