During May and June, Melissa Rogers, a graduate of Shepherd University, will travel around West Virginia collecting stories.

The goal of her latest project, the West Virginia Storytelling Project, is to create a series of informal documentary episodes about storytellers and animated shorts of traditional stories from the region, all tied together as part of a large interactive website. The central focus of the project will be the 2011 West Virginia Liars Competition at the Vandalia Gathering where Rogers will talk to past winners and competitors – including Bill Lepp and Adam Booth-judges and creator/emcee Ken Sullivan.

Rogers is using Kickstarter.com, a crowd-source funding website developed to help independent filmmakers and media artists obtain funds to see their projects through to fund the West Virginia Storytelling Project.

In line with Kickstarter.com guidelines, artists have a set number of days to raise all the funds or the project receives nothing. Roger’s project has a 30-day fundraising window, from start to finish. If the allotted budget ($3,500) isn’t raised before May 12, all pledges are canceled and the project is not funded. Her campaign, which has been up since April 12, has already raised over $2,000 in support.

Learn more about this project at http://kck.st/eEBden or www.kickstarter.com/projects/wvstorytelling/the west-Virginia-storytelling-project.

Rogers graduated from Shepherd University with a BFA in Photography/ Computer Digital Imagery in 2009. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Media Arts from Emerson College in Boston, Mass. She works as a freelance photographer, videographer and web designer.