About Michael.

Michael is an award-winning writer, storytelling trainer, keynote speaker, and certified experiential coach. His work explores how storytelling can create change, make meaning, inspire action, cultivate connection, and transform division. He works with individuals, groups, and organizations around the world to find, craft, and tell their most meaningful stories.

He lives with his young son in Nashville, Tennessee on land once inhabited by the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Yuchi people.

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Michael McRay is a storyteller, teacher, and narrative guide for the brave and brokenhearted. A rebel poet with a therapist’s intuition, a preacher’s cadence, and a playwright’s soul, Michael weaves together narrative practice, psychodrama, and circle process to help people reckon with the stories that have shaped them—and reclaim the agency to shape what comes next. He walks the wild in-between—where story meets soul, and where healing begins in the telling.

To Michael, story isn’t just performance — it’s practice. It’s how we make meaning, how we metabolize pain, how we build bridges between worlds. His work lives at the intersection of narrative intelligence, trauma integration, community connection, and collective imagination. Through his ventures Becoming Restoried and the Istoria Institute, he teaches people and organizations how to become better stories—not just tell them.

Michael’s story work has reached around the globe and deep into the human heart. With over 20 years of travel to Israel and Palestine and a master’s in conflict resolution at Trinity College Dublin, Michael honed his passion for peace and his reverence for truth-telling. He’s sat in story circles in Belfast, Kigali, and Cape Town—and led them in boardrooms, prisons, and living rooms across the United States.

In 2013, he brought a bit of Belfast home and founded Tenx9 Nashville, now Nashville’s longest-running storytelling series. Over 11 years and 1,000+ true personal stories later, Michael is still hosting it—because he believes gathering to tell the truth might be one of the most sacred things we can do.

He’s the author of multiple books, including the award-winning book I Am Not Your Enemy, and the co-editor of Keep Watch With Me: An Advent Reader for Peacemakers. His work has been sought after by TEDx, NASA, Cisco, Accenture, and more—but his favorite audience is still his son Rowan, who reminds him daily what wonder sounds like.

This is Michael’s work: to walk with others into the dark forests of their stories and help them find the wild way through.

Bios for Event Use

Three SENTENCE BIO:

Michael McRay is a nationally recognized storytelling expert and trainer, sought-after experiential coach, and dynamic keynote speaker. He is an award-winning author and the Head of the Istoria Institute for Narrative Intelligence. You can learn more at www.michaelmcray.com and @michaeltmcray on Instagram and LinkedIn.

SHORT BIO:

Michael McRay is a nationally recognized storytelling expert and trainer, sought-after experiential coach, and dynamic keynote speaker. He is the Head of Istoria’s Institute for Narrative Intelligence and the founder of Becoming Restoried, a coaching practice for people yearning to reconcile to their life stories. Michael is the award-winning author of I Am Not Your Enemy: Stories to Transform a Divided World. His facilitation and story prowess have attracted names like NASA and TEDx. He lives in Nashville, TN. Learn more at www.michaelmcray.com

LONG BIO:

Michael McRay is a nationally recognized storytelling expert and trainer, sought-after experiential coach, and dynamic keynote speaker. He is the Head of Istoria’s Institute for Narrative Intelligence and the founder of Becoming Restoried, a coaching practice for people yearning to reconcile to their life stories. Michael also founded and hosts Tenx9 (“ten by nine”) Nashville, the city’s longest-running storytelling series. Michael is the award-winning author of I Am Not Your Enemy: Stories to Transform a Divided World, and he holds a Master’s in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation from Trinity College in Dublin. His facilitation and story prowess have attracted names like NASA and TEDx. He lives in Nashville, TN.

In case you want to know…

 

Education

Certification, Experiential Coach (Level 2) | International Society of Experiential Professionals, 2023

Training in Psychodrama (1 Year) | International Society of Experiential Professionals, 2023

Certificate, Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy | The Embody Lab, 2022

Certification, Conflict Coaching | Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 2021

Executive Certification, Public Narrative: Leadership Storytelling, and Action | Harvard Kennedy School, 2020

M.Phil, Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Studies | Trinity College Dublin at Belfast, 2013

B.A., History | Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, 2011

 

Publications

The Wild Way: A Field Guide from the In-Between | forthcoming Fall 2025

Narrative Intelligence, with Harris III | forthcoming, Spring 2026

I Am Not Your Enemy: Stories to Transform a Divided World, foreword by Ishmael Beah (winner of 2020 Best Book Award in Social Change) | 2020

Keep Watch with Me: An Advent Reader for Peacemakers, with Claire Brown | 2019

Where the River Bends: Considering Forgiveness in the Lives of Prisoners, foreword by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu | 2015

Letters from “Apartheid Street”: A Christian Peacemaker in Occupied Palestine, foreword by Lee C. Camp | 2013

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