Clever by Half (with host Simon Brooks)

story story podcast

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!!

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.

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!

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Duels (with host Isabelle Hauser): Anne Shimojima, Cooper Braun

Anne Shimojima

Anne Shimojima is a third generation Japanese American, born and
raised in Chicago, Illinois. An award-winning elementary school library
media specialist of 35 years, she first discovered the power of story
with her students, using storytelling to enrich and expand the
curriculum and develop a deep emotional connection with her listeners.

Some highlights in her storytelling career include a week as Teller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, TN and performing at such venues as the National Storytelling Festival, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the 1st Asian-American Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Talk Story Storytelling Festival in Honolulu, Storytelling Arts of Indiana, the Hans Christian Andersen Statue in Central Park, and the Stories Connect Us All Online Storytelling Festival.

Cooper Braun

Cooper Braun was raised by granola eating coyotes in Boulder Colorado and grew up without a television. Lacking the traditional American form of child pacification, he found a love for storytelling from records and cassette tapes. Drawn to performance and theater from a young age, Cooper started as an actor (what do you do with a BA in Theater?) and has been working as a professional theater technician the last ten years. In a whirlwind return to the world of live storytelling, three years ago, he now co-hosts the Boulder Story Circle and performs regularly with Rachel Ann Harding as Stories with Spirit. He is a mammal.

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

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The Clever Young Woman: Laura Packer

laura packer

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.

Music by Podington Bear

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In Disguise (with Host Isabelle Hauser): Jennifer Armstrong, True Thomas

Jennifer Armstrong

Jennifer Armstrong has spent her life writing, singing and making music with fiddle, bagpipe, banjo and words. She is a storyteller, singer, instrumentalist, poet and published author with humor, warmth and grace. She works as an artist-in-residence in folk arts, storytelling and writing as well as a private teacher and a performer across the country. Jennifer was a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in 1998 and 2010, has been heard on NPR and has music recordings and published books to her credit.  She lives and works on Gypsy Rose Farm in Belfast, Maine.  They have chickens, ducks, turkeys, milk goats, one horse and a barn cat.  She sometimes feels she has stepped into the folk songs she learned from her parents when she is milking the goats or herding the turkeys into the pen.

True Thomas

True Thomas the Storyteller (aka Robert Seutter) has been storytelling for many years. He comes by it naturally. When he was in kindergarten, his teacher asked him why he put a big black blob of paint on the paper in finger painting. His reply: “It’s a cave… full of bats!”

True is an avid proponent of storytelling. He teaches the art, creates events, and has performed in a wide variety of places from campfires to battlefields. His personal storytelling philosophy is that a good storyteller should be able to tell to anyone, anywhere it’s physically possible. Anyone can and should tell stories, and to become a master of the craft can take a lifetime. He’s also a big believer in the spiritual side of storytelling. He believes in the power of stories and that the right story, in the right time and place can change the world.

Host – Isabelle Hauser

You have heard these stories before, just not like this!Join Isabelle Hauser as she explores mysterious shops in Zug while sharing stories, with Ed Stivender telling "Red Ridding Hood Improv" and Priscilla Howe telling "The Small Tooth Dog".

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. As a storyteller and harpist, she wants to create a space for her audience to see that reality, too. Or to just provide them with a break from everyday life! Whisking people of all ages and origins to long ago and far away with music and story is her greatest passion in life.

Music by Podington Bear

Did you know the Story Story Podcast was featured Feedspots Top 30 Fairy Tale Podcasts? There are a lot of great podcasts on this list and we are thrilled to be included!

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Mythic Love (with Host Simon Brooks): Stuart Stotts, Milbre Burch

Stuart Stotts

Stuart Stotts is an award winning singer, author, storyteller. Stuart has worked as a full-time performer since 1986, and he gives over 200 shows a year for kids, families and adults around the Midwest, and sometimes farther. He’s a frequent presenter at conferences and workshops for teachers, parents and librarians, and he is a Kennedy Center teaching artist. He has released several award-winning recordings, and is also the author six books, including The Bookcase Ghost: A collection of Wisconsin ghost stories., Books in a Box: Lutie Stearns and the Traveling Libraries of Wisconsin, We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed the World, and Curly Lambeau: Building the Green Bay Packers. Stuart lives in Deforest, Wi.

Milbre Burch

A Grammy-nominated recording artist and internationally-known performer, educator, published poet and produced playwright, Milbre Burch is a storyteller in every sense of the word. She has been featured at events and festivals in 36 states and in fifteen European cities.

Burch is known for the versatility of her repertoire from folktales to fantasy, fiction and fairy tales to one-woman shows and original monologues. She is a recipient of the NSN ORACLE Circle of Excellence award.

Visit Milbre’s website.

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!

Continue Reading

Classics Rediscovered VI (with Host Isabelle Hauser) : Ed Stivender, Priscilla Howe

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.

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.”

Host – Isabelle Hauser

You have heard these stories before, just not like this!Join Isabelle Hauser as she explores mysterious shops in Zug while sharing stories, with Ed Stivender telling "Red Ridding Hood Improv" and Priscilla Howe telling "The Small Tooth Dog".

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. As a storyteller and harpist, she wants to create a space for her audience to see that reality, too. Or to just provide them with a break from everyday life! Whisking people of all ages and origins to long ago and far away with music and story is her greatest passion in life.

Music by Podington Bear

Did you know the Story Story Podcast was featured Feedspots Top 30 Fairy Tale Podcasts? There are a lot of great podcasts on this list and we are thrilled to be included!

Continue Reading

Delightful Discoveries (with Host Simon Brooks): Antonio Sacre, Jamie Olivero

Antonio Sacre

Antonio Sacre tells stories.

His tales of growing up bilingually in a Cuban and Irish-American household have inspired children worldwide to gather their own family stories and become storytellers themselves. His stories have been published in award-winning books and audio recordings. His Professional Developments and Keynote addresses have helped educators teach writing to students from pre-Kindergarten through graduate school. Now his stories are being developed for film and television.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two children, and two cats. Yes, he’s a cat guy.

Jamie Olivero

Jamie Olivero is a traditionally trained storyteller and arts-in-education specialist. His commitment is a storyteller is to promote social justice and good citizenship by using the wisdom offered in traditional stories to create common ground between people of different cultures, and backgrounds. He has specially designed workshops and performances for students at different grade levels, teachers, community groups, and general audiences. The workshops include activities that develop trust at the group level, and encourage compassionate and peaceful interaction. His performances draw on world folklore: stories that reflect, humour, mystery, wisdom, and adventure.

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!

Continue Reading

Interconnected Nature (with Host Isabelle Hauser): Priya Muthukumar, Elisa Pearmain

Priya Muthukumar

Priya’s love for storytelling has taken her to various schools, colleges, museums, parks, corporate offices, railway stations…where she has delightfully narrated stories to one & all ! Also her love for Nature makes her include nuggets of environmental wisdom in all her narrations. Priya is a performance-storyteller and is the founder of the storytelling initiative, STORIPUR. She is a translator who works on children’s literature and has translated around 15 books to Tamil. She writes ‘sustainability stories’ for magazines. She strongly believes in the famous quote that if one needs to know about the culture, one needs to listen to stories. And  if  one needs to change the culture, then the stories told too need to change !Currently, she is working with National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bangalore, handling General Elective- Storytelling. You can find her on Facebook or YouTube.

Elisa Pearmain

Elisa began her storytelling career by working for ten years as a Storyteller in Residence in the Boston Public Schools. There she came to appreciate and tell stories from the many diverse cultures that the children represented. Other early storytelling experiences included collecting stories from Vietnam Veterans and sharing them with high school, college and adults in a program called, The Defoliated Heart. She also led groups of women to share and learn from their stories together. These experiences helped to inspire her belief in the power of stories to heal.

Recently her most popular storytelling programs  in the schools are on character education and bullying prevention through story. She received a grant in 2002 to study character education through story from the National Storytelling Network.

She is a currently a board member of The Healing Story Alliance www.healingstory.org and is an active member of The League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (LANES), and past Board member.  You can learn more about LANES and the storytelling conference at www.lanes.org

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. As a storyteller and harpist, she wants to create a space for her audience to see that reality, too. Or to just provide them with a break from everyday life! Whisking people of all ages and origins to long ago and far away with music and story is her greatest passion in life.

Music by Podington Bear

Did you know the Story Story Podcast was featured Feedspots Top 30 Fairy Tale Podcasts? There are a lot of great podcasts on this list and we are thrilled to be included!

Continue Reading

Wit and Wisdom (with Host Simon Brooks): Richard Martin, Anne Shimojima

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.

Anne Shimojima

Anne Shimojima is a third generation Japanese American, born and
raised in Chicago, Illinois. An award-winning elementary school library
media specialist of 35 years, she first discovered the power of story
with her students, using storytelling to enrich and expand the
curriculum and develop a deep emotional connection with her listeners.

Some highlights in her storytelling career include a week as Teller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, TN and performing at such venues as the National Storytelling Festival, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the 1st Asian-American Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Talk Story Storytelling Festival in Honolulu, Storytelling Arts of Indiana, the Hans Christian Andersen Statue in Central Park, and the Stories Connect Us All Online Storytelling Festival.

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!

Continue Reading

The Hosts tell Holiday Stories! : Simon Brooks, Isabelle Hauser, Rachel Ann Harding

View the show on YouTube!

Rachel Ann Harding

Traditional Storyteller and Musician, Rachel Ann Harding is passionate about telling the most beautiful folk, myth, and traditional tales.

Rachel Ann weaves story and song together to create unique and entertaining storytelling events, keynotes and workshops that display the relevance of storytelling in our lives. She believes that fairytales are not just for children and mesmerizes audiences with old tales woven into new adventures. As the producer of the Story Story Podcast she brings traditional stories to people around the world who also are in love with fairytales.

Rachel Ann Harding began singing and playing a variety of instruments in her early twenties, crafting lyrics laced with tenderness and humor. She blends harmonies on the ukulele and looper to create melodies that connect to the heart and the ear. Her music has been called, “delightful, folksy, avant garde.”

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 album “A Flight of Stories” is a gathering of tales from around the world – England, Russia, Japan, and Africa. They are stories for the whole family to enjoy.” You can also get his first published book  Under The Oaken Bough or listen to his podcast Conversations with Storytellersto hear what it is like to perform storytelling for a living from some living legends!

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

Continue Reading