Glynn Washington, host of “Snap Judgment”—a popular NPR storytelling show that will offer a live stage edition as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival—grew up in different parts of Michigan (Midland, Grand Rapids, Detroit, etc.) as part of an apocalyptic cult called The Worldwide Church of God.

And though Washington eventually came to Ann Arbor as a University of Michigan student, he needed to go to Japan (ostensibly to study Japanese) to really escape the cult.

“The cult was strong in Ann Arbor when I moved there,” Washington said. “I was visited by various people from the organization, wanting to know where I’d been. I needed to get farther away. And it’s worldwide, so they were in Japan, too, but not where I was, thank goodness.”

Washington was still in Japan, in fact, when he got an acceptance letter from U-M’s law school. He earned his JD in 1996 and worked for a series of nonprofits before winning an NPR talent search and launching “Snap” 3 years ago. He now lives in Oakland, California.

Washington looks forward to re-visiting Dominick’s, Ashley’s and Good Time Charley’s while in Ann Arbor (though he mourns Steve’s Lunch, saying, “I miss my Korean lunches”); and in anticipation of his return, he answered some questions from AnnArbor.com.

Q. You open the show each week with your own story. Which comes first, a show’s theme, or a story?

A. Generally, we have a story, and we think we can build other stories around this story; it’s generally not mine. … Sometimes we have an idea for a theme and the story comes later. It works in all kinds of ways. … And my opening is the least of my problems. But I shouldn’t say that. Often, it’s very hard to come up with a story to match a particular show, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. Sometimes I sit in front of a laptop and there’s just nothing coming out.

Q. You draw your own stories from such a broad range of experiences. Do you think having a large stock of stories is a direct result of looking for, and saying yes to, new things?

PREVIEW

'Snap Judgment'

• What: The Ann Arbor Summer Festival presents a live version of Snap Judgment, an NPR show that features people telling raw and intimate stories about defining moments in their lives, integrated with music - “storytelling with a beat.”
• Where: Power Center, 121 Fletcher St. in Ann Arbor.
• When: Saturday, June 29 at 8 p.m.
• How much: $25-$40. Visit www.tickets.a2sf.org or call 734-764-2538.

A. Definitely. We always tell non-storytellers, if you want to tell great stories, do different things and take chances early on. For me, one of the things that’s helpful is that I moved a lot as a child. Every year, like clockwork, we’d move from one house to another. By the time I was in high school, I’d lived in 13 or 14 different places. … And because I moved around so much, I have these mental markers for everything that went down: We were in a trailer home at a certain time; or that place by the pond; or that time we lived on a farm - these are markers I can go to, and this brings back a lot of stories.

Q. Did your upbringing in the cult shape you as a storyteller?

A. Coming out of the cult (at age 19), I felt like I’d had a misspent youth, and that I’d wasted all those years; but if you want to know how to tell a story, there’s no better place than at the feet of cult leaders who are telling you that Jesus is coming next week; because when he doesn’t show up, you’ve got some explaining to do. … But when I was sitting there, petrified out of my mind, thinking that End Times were upon us, I didn’t know I was learning something.

Q. The show’s website has a place for people to submit stories. Do you really get stories for the show this way?

A. It’s not as common as I’d like. We comb everything for stories. Each other’s memories, obscure magazines, old cookbooks, people we meet in a restroom—it’s really an involved process. We’re looking for stories all the time. We really are. They can happen anywhere at any time. … But then, you come back, and you’ve got to pitch it, and it’s got a fairly elaborate process to go through before it makes it to air.

Q. There were already a few storytelling radio shows out there when you created the show. What did you want to do differently?

A. Our calling card is first-person narrative, and so we’re not trying to be news reporters, number one. And we’re not on a stage. We’re doing a stage show in Ann Arbor, but that’s a pivot from what we normally do. Our bread and butter is hearing from people who would normally never get near a stage. It’s an intimate process, and the person doing it trusts that we’re going to treat story with respect and fairness. … When we get to do a live show, we want to keep that same spirit, but the process itself is very different.

… The show is somewhat a reaction to what was going on. I love the storytelling stuff that’s happening, but it seemed, in terms of public media storytelling, we were getting in the way of own stories. Instead of just telling them, we translated them. The innovation on Snap Judgment is that one person tells his or her own story. America is smart enough to understand America. Someone from a microcommunity living in dire straits on a Mormon compound doesn’t need a translation. We just need the person to speak.

There’s an art to putting a story together, but if we’re doing our job, the art is invisible, and you let them speak directly to listeners and get a shoulder-view of their world. Even if you think you’d make a different decision in their circumstances, you’ll understand their perspective.

Q. Music plays a big supporting role in the show. Could you talk about that?

A. We’re doing something called immersive storytelling, where audio soundscaping puts you in the mindset of person who tells the story. … We are well aware that we’re dealing with the internet generation, so you’ll see our stories are shorter, too. They almost work as songs for the audience. But that’s our own innovation. I compare our show to Radiolab, which does a really good job of soundscaping concepts. They make you understand through sound how something works. … We want you to feel (the story). We’re not just relating facts.

Jenn McKee is an entertainment reporter for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.