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Brilliant performances of traditional and true-life tales have earned Laura Simms worldwide recognition and honors since 1968. Combining ancient myth and symbolic fairytales with personal story, Laura has created a cutting-edge venue of storytelling that is in direct relationship to audience: meaningful and wonderfully entertaining. She is a storyteller and spokesperson for the revival of oral traditions at theaters, festivals, schools, symposiums, museums, conferences and special events throughout the world. Her warmth, depth of understanding, profound effect on audience, diverse material, humor, dynamic voice and range of characterizations has achieved legendary status. As an award winning recording artist, essayist, author and teacher, Laura is currently the director of the Gaindeh Project (an international storytelling for survival initiative). She is also affiliated with the Interfaith Center in NY, The New York Shambhala Center, the Ojai Foundation, and has served three times as an artist for the Lincoln Center Institute. Simms teaches at the University of Milwaukee and The Naropa University, and she has directed the foremost Storytelling Residency in the United States for the past twenty years. Most recently, she appeared in the International Theater Festival in Sibui, Romania, the Belfast International Children’s Theater Festival, the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee, and A Traveling Jewish Theater in San Francisco, California. Her commitment is to spirituality, healing, education, women’s issues and Human Rights. In 1999 Laura won the Sesame Street Sunny Days Award for her contribution to children of the world and has received many awards for her books, tapes and projects. She writes regularly for Parabola Magazine, and her most recent tape set is Gift of Dreams with Soundstrue Recordings, Colorado. Her most recent adult title, published in Fall of 2002 was The Robe of Love, (Codhill Press, Fall 2002). After 9/11, Simms spearheaded the publication of Stories to Nourish the Hearts of Children in a Time of Crisis, and in Fall of 2003, worked with Chocolate Sauce to create A Key to the Heart and Other Afghan Tales to benefit the education of women in Afghanistan. This project involved art drawn by schoolchildren in both New York and Afghanistan, with stories printed in both English and Dari. As director of Gaindeh, Simms travels often to Romania to teach storytelling skills at orphanages and to gypsy mothers |
