Gioia Timpanelli

Gioia Timpanelli is one of the founders of the worldwide revival of storytelling. She is one of the handful of artists who significantly changed the way our culture views narrative and the oral tradition. Often called the “Dean of American Storytelling,” she is today considered one of the world’s foremost storytellers—widely respected as both a master and scholar of the ageless art. She won two Emmy Awards (Citations of Merit) for Tales from Viet Nam and for her series of thirty programs on storytelling, Stories from My House, on educational television, where she created, wrote, produced, and appeared in eight series of literature programs shown on PBS stations throughout the United States. She has also received the prestigious Women’s National Book Association Award for bringing the oral tradition to the American public and the Maharishi Award. She has performed her improvisational telling of ancient and modern stories and given talks in collaboration with respected masters of other art forms, especially in the world of poetry and letters throughout the United States and in other countries. She is one of the founding members of the New York Storytelling Center in New York City. Her most recent book is What Makes a Child Lucky.