WERAWC22 Bios

As project director of StoriesLive® she created and implements a curriculum used to teach over 7,000 Greater Boston high school students to tell compelling first person narratives. As an adjunct faculty she teaches storytelling to undergraduates at Tufts and runs a Junior Seminar at Lesley University. In January of 2014, she returned to lecture on storytelling and language acquisition in Tokyo, Japan as part of a multi-year grant funded by the Japanese government. www.norahdooley.com

Norah has an MEd in Creative Arts in Learning from Lesley University and a BFA in Painting from Tufts University/Museum School. Described as an “… entrancing storyteller” by the Boston Globe Norah is sought after as a keynote speaker on literacy and storytelling. She’s been a featured storyteller in regional festivals; Cambridge River Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Albany River Festival, 3 Apples Storytelling Festival, MA and at the Clearwater Festival, NY. In 2013 she was invited to perform at the Exchange Place of the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough,TN.

She has been a classroom teacher, a middle school performing arts teacher, workshop and training leader, currently teaches storytelling as an adjunct faculty at Lesley and Tufts University and teaches in several adult and community education settings. She is booked through Young Audiences ofMassachusetts and lives in Brookline, MA with her husband and a revolving subset of their 4 daughters.

2014 Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Suffolk University • Boston MA

2013 Creative Leadership Award • puppetshowplace.org • Brookline MA

2012 National Storytelling Networks•Oracle Award•storynet.org

2010 Recipient of the Brother Blue & Ruth Hill Award • LANES.org

Where I am coming from:

I grew up in NYC on Staten Island. We lived in a relatively rural area and the lady next door raised chickens-- hundreds of them. My sister and brother and I spent all our free time playing in the woods at Robin Hood,W.W.II combat and Knights of the Round Table, making bows,arrows,swords and scenarios. We were über geeks before there even were geeks.

When I was thirteen our family moved to the Boston area and I went to public school for the first time. Catholic parochial school had been the bane of my existence. There were sometimes as many as 60 students in a class and the teachers were harsh disciplinarians. Brookline public schools were a release and revelation.

After high school, I went to art school and worked at many jobs to support my "brilliant career" as a painter. I have been a cab driver, breakfast cook, bicycle courier, burglar alarm monitor, copy machine operator and waitress. But my favorite part time job was as a substitute teacher. While our children were young I went back to school and got a degree in education. It was in graduate school that I learned about storytelling as a vocation.

EYES ON OWLS EyesOnOwls.com

The owls we care for at Eyes On Owls are permanently disabled - that is they can't survive on their own in the wild. Many of the owls are survivors of collisions with vehicles. We give each owl a safe, clean, low stress home and all the mice they need to eat (owls don't eat plants, of course). Several times a week, we bring a selection of owls to a school or group program to help people learn about these fascinating birds.

We have federal and state permits to display the owls for educational programs. The owls ARE NOT pets. Our owls have sharp talons and beaks, special dietary and health requirements, as well as special housing we custom build for each bird. Non-flighted owls get handicapped ramps in their aviaries.

Eyes On Owls brings live owls to you and your group. Our facility is not open to the public - this way the owls get the rest and shelter they need to stay healthy.

Marcia and Mark Wilson bring live owls to their Eyes On Owls programs. They are shown with an

Eurasian Eagle Owl (left) and a Snowy Owl (right). Photo by evanrichman.com

LELAND FAULKNER

Beginning with movement theatre and evolving through new vaudeville and performance art, Leland was trained in the old world tradition of master and apprentice. He is a professionally trained film maker, mime, actor, and director. Leland studied with a variety of distinguished teachers including Tony Montanaro, Jacques Lecoq, and theatre masters from Italy and Japan. Leland received a Bachelor of Arts degree in film making from the Brooks Institute, in Santa Barbara, California, and continues to work on film and media projects. On the performance level, Leland has been a touring artist for over twenty years. He has performed throughout the United States, and has taught and performed at theatre festivals, in cultural exchange programs, for corporate sponsors, in commercial work, in theaters and schools.

JUDITH JANGO-COHEN JangoCohen.com

His training in Biology took him to Tampa, and he will return to Florida in the spring of 2004, to study Everglades animals and plants that he intends to re-create in folded handmade paper. His exhibit will travel, and will first be shown at the Morikami Museum in Del Ray Beach, Florida.

A similar internship in 1997 at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson created a spectacular show attended by over 40,000 people. Many of his works from that show are displayed in his hardcover book, "ORIGAMIDO - Masterworks of Folded Paper"

CYNTHIA LORD CynthiaLord.com

My parents not only suffered through my songs about warbling fruit, they were generally quite tolerant of my other forays into art, music, and literature. Ear-splitting clarinet practices, countless trips to the library, and incomprehensible early drawings. My mother still has a few of those drawings on which she wrote captions like: "Cynthia says this is a goat."

I was a daydreaming, shy child, and I will always be grateful for the time and room my parents gave me to be myself.

My favorite books when I was very young included HAPPY, a story my mother bought at the grocery store about a kitten who is found under the hood of a school bus, PEPPERMINT, a story about a kitten nobody wants who is adopted by a little girl (Can you tell I wanted a pet very badly?), FANTASTIC MR. FOX by Roald Dahl, and WINNIE THE POOH by A. A. Milne.

The first pencil-and-paper writing I remember doing was on a birthday card I gave to my grandfather. I was probably five years old, and my mother handed me a pristine, white envelope and told me to write Grandpa's name on the front.

And I did. In huge, gangly letters that covered the whole envelope, I wrote "ED" in blue pen.

I was proud of it, until I saw my mother's face. She had meant me to write "Grandpa" in small, lady-like letters, but since there wasn't another envelope, she said it would have to do.

My grandfather laughed when he saw my envelope. It was the first and only time I ever heard him laugh with complete abandon, until he had tears in his eyes. When he looked at me all he said was "thank you," but he meant it, and I was proud to have written something that made him laugh.

I grew up in rural New Hampshire beside a lake. We ice skated in the winter and spent most of the summers swimming and cannonballing off the dock into the water. My sister was my first friend, and one of our favorite things to do was to turn over our rowboat and find toads, whom we treated to surfboard rides and visits to the "Toad Motel" we created using trowels and paper cups in my mother's loam pile.

But we couldn't keep the toads more than a few minutes, so my sister and I finally ("Please, please, please, Mom? We proooooomise we'll take care of it!") talked my mother into a real pet. Spotsie the turtle lived in a tank that included a little island and a plastic palm tree, and loved bites of raw hamburger and deep-sea adventures in the kitchen sink and the bathtub.

KEITH MUNSLOW KeithMunslow.com

Because there was a piano in the house, and his older siblings had blazed the trail, he began playing from a young age. It wasn’t until an older brother came home from studying jazz improvisation at Berklee College of Music that Keith learned some of the basics of music theory. He began tapping out songs on the keyboard, and, influenced by the songwriting of Randy Newman and the lyrical genius of artists like Bootsy Collins, Little Richard and Professor Longhair, that the spark of music took fire.

By high school, Keith was writing his own songs, playing drums as well as piano, and playing in bands with friends. He continued drawing, creating whimsical cartoon drawings to amuse himself. After a two-year stint at Swain School of Design, he worked as an illustrator and then hit the road with Big Nazo, a puppet and mask touring company.

In the early 90s, he moved to Providence, RI, and engaged in the thriving arts community there. In the 1990s, Keith helped found AS220, a non-profit arts incubator in downtown Providence. He served on AS220’s board of directors for 18 years, and also developed the Youth Arts Conference, which brought inner city students to work in AS220’s resident artists’ studios. It was from AS220’s stage, that in 2006 Keith launched The Empire Revue, a high-energy variety show featuring sketch comedy, music, improvisation, and special guest performers. Now in its eighth year, The Empire Revue continues to attract standing room only crowds on the first Sunday of every month. The Empire Street neighborhood around AS220 thrives now, and city leaders refer to it as the “Arts and Entertainment District.”

Also in the 90s, Keith added music education to his repertoire. Over the years, Keith Munslow has entertained thousands of children and adults at festivals, concerts, schools and libraries throughout New England – and beyond. Keith has made numerous recordings for children and families, including Accidentally On Purpose, and Dressed Up for the Party, both of which garnered Parents’ Choice Awards and national radio play. His newest album, Tiny Destroyer (2015), features stories and songs reflecting the chaos and humor of everyday family living.

In addition to his one-man show for kids and families, Keith performs with the New Orleans-flavored blues band, Superchief Trio, and in a hilarious duo show with GRAMMY Award-winning performer Bill Harley. Their joint album It’s Not Fair to Me (2013) gained wide acclaim. Together, the duo also perform an annual benefit show for the Rhode Island Food Bank.

Keith created an acclaimed multi-day literacy enrichment program called “Build-a-Book”, which he has conducted at numerous schools throughout New England. With his natural enthusiasm for story writing, Keith guides students in the creation of class generated stories, complete with illustrations. He also conducts workshops in many disciplines, including: songwriting, illustration, and comedy and theatrical improvisation. Keith is performing arts instructor for the renowned TALL University after school program in Central Falls, RI. Utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach, TALL University integrates arts and literacy, with an eye towards enhanced reading, writing, and communication skills.

Keith also teaches and performs musical improv at The Providence Improv Guild (www.improvpig.com). As a composer, Keith has created original music for Perishable Theatre’s Shows for Young Audiences, as well as main stage productions, Manton Avenue Project, and choreographer Heidi Henderson. For over a decade, Keith was a principal performer and musical director for Big Nazo, an international puppet and mask theater group based in Providence.

With an unstinting commitment to creativity and collaboration, Keith continues to search for new opportunities to combine his interests in the performing arts, literacy and community building. He resides in Providence with young son, Luc.

RICHARD SOBOL RichardSobol.com

His photographs from these disparate worlds have been published in: Time, National Geographic, Newsweek, People, Paris Match, Bunte, Stern, The New York Times, and Photo District News. As he added text to these stories he has since published eleven books for children and adults.