Norah Dooley is a storyteller, critically acclaimed children's author, and educator who performs in schools, libraries, festivals and conferences. She specializes in teaching people of all ages the value of their stories and how to tell them. She was a featured performer for Stories from the Stage on WGBH’s World Channel, for Fugitive Productions in Arlington, Acton and Framingham and at the 10th Annual Concert for Peace in Fort Erie, Ontario. For the 25 summers she told stories to thousands of children through ReadBoston.org. From 2015-2019 she appeared as a historical storyteller for SaveThe Harbor.org twice supported by MassHumanities.org grant.
She is the founder of the curriculum based high school storytelling program, StoriesLive.org, and was a co-founder of massmouth.org and the Boston Story Slam series. She taught storytelling at Lesley University’s graduate school of Education and has taught undergraduates at Boston, Tufts and Suffolk Universities. In fall of 2013 she was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Storytelling at Suffolk University. Internationally she has lectured teachers of English and graduate students in Tokyo, Japan on the role of storytelling in language acquisition. In summer of 2017 she taught storytelling in Arsuha, to Tanzanian Secondary school teachers as part of the African Storytelling initiative of http://www.worlded.org
Norah has an MEd in Creative Arts and Learning and has been a full time classroom teacher and an instructor in visual and performing arts in elementary and middle schools. Her 4 published picture books are available at LernerBooks.com and all titles; Everybody Cooks Rice, Everybody Bakes Bread, Everybody Serves Soup, Everybody Brings Noodles are about her family and their former Cambridge neighbors. Norah has 6 spoken word CDs: The Music of Angels (1999) Italian Folk Tales (2002) Stories from the Neighborhood (2002) Rabbitails (2006) My Bad,Bad Dog and Other Neighbors (2006) and Irish Tales (2007) all produced by Seat of Her Pants Productions and available at CDBaby.com. Her latest book, My Bad Bad Dog (SeatofHerPants, 2016) is the first in a series of picture books about her childhood.
Audiences: PreK, Elementary, Teens, Families, Adults
Genres: Folktales, Historical Tales, Personal Stories
Awards:
2011 LANES • Brother Blue Award • with massmouth.com founders Doria Hughes, Andrea Lovett and Stu Mendleson
2012 NSN • Oracle Award • for Service and Leadership • Northeast Region
Performance Fee: Negotiable - see https://artsforlearningma.org/index.php/artists/norah-dooley for range
Workshop Fee: Negotiable - see https://artsforlearningma.org/index.php/artists/norah-dooley for range
"Norah Dooley is an entrancing storyteller." -- Scott Alarick, Boston Globe
- Boston Globe
"To have Norah and the other storytellers come into our classroom and bring into vibrant life their stories, full of life and told with genuine emotion was like unlocking a vault in my high schoolers...every one of them, from the most boisterous to the shyest, took their moment in front of an audience to speak. For some, this was the first time they published themselves. If an educator is truly looking to have their students find their voice and understand the art of telling a story, I can think of no better way. Norah and her crew are both genius at storytelling and at teaching, immediately empowering students to attempt the craft, with amazing results."-- Sondra Longo, Teacher, AP Literature and Composition at Humanities and Leadership Development High School Lawrence, MA
- CHLD