Warwick Story Share brings neighbors together at Fence Road Brewery

A Frisbee game on the first day of college closed the ninth Warwick Story Share at Fence Road Farm Brewery, where owner Dan Doyle used a personal memory to cap an evening built around 12 short stories from Warwick residents. The event ran Thursday, April 30, 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m. at 13 Fence Road in Warwick, and We The People Warwick opened it free to adolescents and adults, with refreshments available for purchase.

The format was tightly defined. We The People Warwick required each storyteller to draw from a personal lived experience, keep the material nonpolitical, tell the story rather than read it, and stay close to five minutes. That structure gave the room a quick rhythm, moving from one lived moment to the next without losing the intimacy that has made Story Share one of Warwick’s more distinctive community events.

Among the stories heard that night were an encounter with a doe and her fawn and a winding road that led a nurse to motherhood. Doyle’s closing story tied the evening together with a memory of seeing people play Frisbee on his first day of college, a moment he described as cosmic serendipity that helped shape his life and, by extension, the place he helped build in Warwick. Fence Road Farm Brewery says Doyle is co-owner of the brewery and The Oasis at Warwick, and that his idea for an 18-hole disc golf course, brewery, restaurant and event space began as a dream decades ago before he bought the 47-acre property in November 2011.

The setting mattered as much as the stories. Earlier Story Share gatherings had been held in libraries and municipal buildings, but the brewery atmosphere gave this edition a more conversational and intimate feel. Organizers said that a welcoming tavern setting made it easier for neighbors to connect, and Fence Road Farm Brewery describes itself as a third space, using the sociological idea of a place between home and work where people can gather and feel a sense of belonging.

For Beverly Braxton, the founder and director of We The People Warwick, that is the point. The organization says she is a retired teacher, Orange County’s 2006 Teacher of the Year, and one of the first trained mediators in the county, with decades of experience in peacemaking and bridge-building. Story Share sits inside a broader mission that also includes a twice-yearly dialogue series, but the storytelling night has become the clearest expression of the group’s civic purpose.

The gathering also fits a pattern. The April 30, 2025 Story Share at the Warwick Senior Center featured 12 storytellers and drew about 75 listeners, while the 2024 edition at the Buckbee Center filled the room with laughter, tears and conversation afterward. What began as a local experiment has hardened into a recurring ritual, one that suggests Warwick residents still want a place to hear one another in person and build a shared civic life from real experience.