Specialty: Worldwide Folktales & Music
www.heatherforest.com & www.storyarts.org
Heather Forest, PhD is a storyteller, author, musician and storytelling educator. She is founder and executive director of Story Arts Inc., a Long Island, NY based not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art of storytelling and its educational applications. Her seventeen folktale books and recordings have won numerous awards including the American Library Association’s Notable Recording Award, several Parents’ Choice Gold Awards, several Storytelling World Awards, and the Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice Award. A modern-day bard, she has toured her performance repertoire of world folktales told in a fusion of poetry, prose, original folk music and the sung and spoken word to theatres, schools, conferences and major storytelling festivals throughout the United States and abroad. She has been featured ten times at the National Storytelling Festival, Tennessee and has appeared at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Smithsonian Institute, Wash. D.C., the Sidmouth International Folk Festival, England, and the Glistening Waters Storytelling Festival, New Zealand. She is a recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award presented by the National Storytelling Network.