Loren Niemi told his first formal story in First Grade to the disapproval of Sister Mary Margaret and has been at it more or less nonstop since then.For the last 40 years he has be...view moreLoren Niemi told his first formal story in First Grade to the disapproval of Sister Mary Margaret and has been at it more or less nonstop since then.For the last 40 years he has been an innovative professional story-teller creating, collecting, coach-ing, directing, performing and teaching stories – traditional and personal, funny, scary, erotic or poetic – to audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings. He tells the life he lives frequently, artfully, and truthfully.He is a published author of the award winning “The New Book of Plots” on the use of narratives in oral and written forms and the co-author with Elizabeth Ellis of the critically acclaimed “Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories” on the value and necessity of stories that are hard to hear and harder to tell.He was a 1998 Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and the recipient of a 2016 National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award.view less