We are honored to publish this first tape with Gioia, who has been telling for over 20 years. In an afternoon and evening of improvisational storytelling, she performed a diverse and mesmerizing selection of traditional Sicilian folktales; the Grimms' versions of "Cinderella" and "The Shoemaker and the Elves" (the first story Gioia remembers as a child); nature stories; and personal stories from her childhood in Brooklyn. Gioia expresses a reverence for the natural world. Her stories honor the ways the ordinary holds extraordinary things and the ways extraordinary things are made of the ordinary.
Gioia Timpanelli has performed and presented world literature and poetry for NPR, PBS, and groups and conferences nationwide and internationally. Her first book of fiction, Sometimes the Soul, won the American Book Award. She lives in Woodstock, New York."