This special issue of the Journal of Disaster Research focuses on disaster storytelling, an emerging concept in disaster risk reduction. Despite its popularity and importance, its individual practices and activities, as they tend to be spontaneous and local, have received only limited attention from academia and have not been given special attention by the disaster research community.

The papers included in this volume contain multi-dimensional discussions on disaster storytelling, including ones that focus on concepts and theory, the functions of disaster museums, tourism, local communities, UNESCO geoparks, disaster ruins and heritage, art and culture, and disaster education. The readers can understand the variety of disaster storytelling activities that exist around the world and their potential contribution to building resilience in society. We believe this issue is the first academic publication to focus specifically on disaster storytelling, and we hope that this volume contributes to creating scientific value, attracts additional attention, and develops further discussions about the role of disaster storytelling within the disaster research community. We also believe that such discussions will help various individuals and entities reidentify the importance and significance of their activities of disaster storytelling as well as contribute to continuing or strengthening such activities around the world.

All of the contributors to this issue participated in the International Forum on Telling Live Lessons from Disasters (TeLL-Net Forum), held January 24–26, 2020 in Kobe, Japan. The articles included in this issue include ones that were inspired by discussions during and after the forum. Readers interested in this forum can obtain the official report from the TeLL-Net website: https://tell-net.jp/forum2020/pdf/00_Tell_Net2020_Report_print.pdf.

We, the editorial board of this special issue, would like to express our deep appreciation to the Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute for the research grant on disaster storytelling. We also would like to express our gratitude to the Kobe Machizukuri Rokko Island Fund Charitable Trust (Tokyo, Japan) and AIG Institute (Osaka, Japan) for financial contributions that supported the publication of the issue.