Joel Ben Izzy

It was back in 1983 that he graduated from Stanford with a self-designed degree in English, Creative Writing and Storytelling, and set off to travel the world, gathering and telling stories. Since then he has told stories and taught storytelling in some 36 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

With every stop on his itinerary, his repertoire of stories has grown. Some are tales from people he meets on the road, and others he finds are traditional tales from the places he’s traveled. Then there are the stories that seem to find him – and stick. These are true stories, more or less, and what he’s come to love over the years is the blend of all these stories together.

Donna Washington

Donna L. Washington is a professional storyteller, actress, and author. She started performing at age six. She has adapted folktales into two full-length stage productions at Chicago’s Upstage Downstage Theater and performed at numerous storytelling festivals. She is the author of “The Story of Kwanzaa, and she received a Parents’ Choice Award for her recording “Live and Learn: The Exploding Frog and Other Stories.

Donna has performed at thousands of schools & libraries and numerous storytelling festivals throughout the country. 

She also offers workshops in storytelling, writing, education, and creative drama for librarians and educators as well.

Music by Podington Bear!

Richard Martin

The stories Richard Martin tells are the folk tales which have been told for hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. With over 300 stories in his repertoire, they reflect the full range of human experience: the comic, the bawdy, the profound, the divine. Far from being for little children (although he does tell for children, too), these powerful and deep tales offer unforgettable listening for adults. If you like theatre, you’ll definitely love storytelling. It combines the intensity of a play by a solo performer with the intimacy of a one-to-one conversation. Richard tells stories throughout Europe and as far away as India, Singapore, Hong Kong and America – in theatres, universities, schools, for corporate events or private parties. He usually tells in English, although having lived in Germany since 1976, he is sometimes asked to tell in German.

Judith and Dan

Once upon a time there was a wandering musician named Dan Marcotte who played the lute, sang songs, and loved stories.  One evening, he stumbled into a meeting of the Chicago Storytelling Guild and met Judith Heineman, its founder and master storyteller.  She was looking for a musician who could play early music for a newly commissioned show by the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. Their first and very successful performance together, The Magic Carpet: Songs and Stories from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, began an artistic partnership that has lasted fourteen years and counting.

Guest Host – Simon Brooks

Simon Brooks is an award-winning British storyteller living in America – actually, New London, New Hampshire, New England, New World!  He also uses his voice to record audio books. He is also a poet, writer, photographer, and educator.

Order his new book Under The Oaken Bough and listen to his new podcast Conversations with Storytellers to hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

Music by Podington Bear!

Laura Packer

Laura Packer has been telling stories her whole life – her mother reports she was born talking. The daughter of a children’s librarian and a writer, it seems inevitable that she become a storyteller and writer herself, since her childhood was steeped in narrative. By second grade, Laura was telling stories to her classmates, creating her own magazines and writing letters to the editor of her hometown newspaper; her deep love of fairytales and mythology eventually led her to obtain a degree in Folklore and Mythology from Boston University. Imagine her surprise when she discovered, upon graduating, that there isn’t a crying need for folklorists!

Undaunted by the lack of job openings for folklorists, Laura has built a career helping people and organizations find their own story, performing original and traditional tales around the world, and creating written narrative that draws the reader into new possibilities.

Norah Dooley

Norah Dooley,storyteller, critically acclaimed children’s author and educator, performs in schools, libraries, conferences and festivals. She specializes in teaching people of all ages how important their stories are and how to tell them. In 2013, Norah was a featured performer at the Exchange Place of the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough,TN. She has performed at the Clearwater Festival, the Newport Folk Festival and several Cambridge Revels. Norah specializes in Irish and Italian folklore and is on the roster of Young Audiences at yamass.org. For the past 21 summers she has told stories to 1000s of children through ReadBoston.org. These past 4 years she appeared as a historical storyteller for SaveThe Harbor.org twice supported by MassHumanities.org grant.

She teaches storytelling at Lesley University’s graduate school of Education and has taught storytelling to undergraduates at Lesley, Tufts, Boston and Suffolk Universities. Internationally she has lectured teachers of English and graduate students in Tokyo, Japan on the role of storytelling in language acquisition. In summer of 2017 she taught storytelling in Arsuha, to Tanzanian Secondary school teachers as part of the African Storytelling initiative of http://www.worlded.orgNorah has an MEd in Creative Arts and Learning and has been a full time classroom teacher and an instructor in visual and performing arts in elementary and middle schools. Her 4 published picture books are available at LernerBooks.com and all titles; Everybody Cooks Rice, Everybody Bakes Bread, Everybody Serves Soup, Everybody Brings Noodles are about her family and their former Cambridge neighbors.  Norah has 6 spoken word CDs: The Music of Angels ( 1999) Italian Folk Tales (2002) Stories from the Neighborhood  (2002) Rabbitails (2006) My Bad,Bad Dog and Other Neighbors (2006) and Irish Tales (2007) all produced by Seat of Her Pants Productions and available at CDBaby.com. Her latest book, My Bad Bad Dog (SeatofHerPants, 2016) is the first in a series of picture books about her childhood. 

Host – Isabelle Hauser

A fairy tale believer since the beginning of her time, Isabelle Hauser discovered the path of storytelling training with professional storyteller Liz Weir in Northern Ireland. When Isabelle is not telling tales or playing the harp on various stages in Switzerland and abroad, you can find her talking to the swans on the shore of her hometown lake, looking for four leaf clover, or chasing rainbows in the surrounding forests.

Music by Podington Bear

Priscilla Howe

“I live in my head. A lot. I make stuff up, I borrow from old tales, I reinterpret new stories. As a storyteller, I’m a tour guide to that space in my brain. I work without a script, without costumes, without props. When I’m doing it right, listeners laugh, smile, sigh and breathe together, connected in the space of stories. I perform at schools, libraries, festivals, special events, and in my own backyard, literally. My mouthy hand puppets come along to shows for young children. I tell more grownup stories to, well, grownups and older kids. We play together. Apart from being the oldest educational method in the world, storytelling is just plain fun.”

Join Priscilla Howe for online story time or join her Patreon to get stories directly from her!!

Ed Stivender

Since 1977, when he left his day job as a high school teacher in Connecticut and turned to storytelling full-time, Ed has fabulated his way around the globe –appearing in schools, churches, coffeehouses and theaters, as well as at major storytelling festivals.  He has been a featured performer at the National Storytelling Festival, the Cape Clear Island International Storytelling Festival in Ireland, Graz Festival, Austria and our own Philadelphia Folk Festival. In reviews of his work, Ed Stivender has been called “the Robin Williams of storytelling” by the Miami Herald  and “a Catholic Garrison Keillor” by Kirkus Review.