I live in my head. 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 sophisticated stories to grownups and older kids. We play together.

Apart from being the oldest educational method in the world, storytelling is just plain fun.

Here's how I became a storyteller:

• Told stories as a teenage babysitter,

• Grew up, lived in Belgium for a year (junior year abroad, and Bulgaria for a year,

• Earned a Master's Degree in Library Service, got a job as a Slavic cataloger at the University of Kansas.

• In 1988 swerved to be a children's librarian at Russell Library in Middletown, CT,

• Learned to tell stories, attended every festival, conference and workshop I possibly could,

• In 1993 quit my job, moved to Lawrence KS and leapt into full-time storytelling.

Since then, I've told stories in fourteen countries on four continents, occasionally in French and Bulgarian, but mostly in English, often for ESL students. I perform, teach occasional classes and workshops, and coach other storytellers. In 2015, I spent five months in Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship. My book Clever, Kind, Tricky and Sly: A Bulgarian Folktale Sampler was published in 2021 by Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, and can be found on Bookshop.org, Amazon and at your favorite independent bookstore.

I live in Lawrence, KS with my cat Pippin. I'm also looking for the best restaurant pie on earth. Want more info? Ask me anything!