Stories communicate something important about being human that bypasses the logical mind and touches our very soul. My favorite stories are ones that combine mystery, wisdom and humour. I love storytelling because it is such a simple, warm and intimate medium and it creates a sense of community. I believe in the power of stories to help us find our place in the world and bring us back to essentials: how to live and how to love.
Fiona telling at Milk and Cookies Stories, Dublin, in October 2010
Once upon a time ...
In 1999, during Poetry Week in Paris Fiona stumbled upon a storyteller called Hamed Bouzzine. He was telling of a forbidden friendship between a child and a lion, while playing a simple tune on a minuscule thumb piano. From that moment, she was hooked and had to find out how to become a ...
Storyteller!
According to the internet, there was on Cape Clear Island, where she had spent summers as a child, an annual Storytelling Workshop. Fiona attended it religiously, telling one story each time, and keeping quiet for the other 11 months of the year! Until the day in 2007 when her storyteller came out of hiding. . .
Since then ...
Fiona has been telling stories to young and old, in French or English, and in such diverse venues as storytelling clubs, hotels, libraries, cafes... She also performed at the Mosney Refugee Centre in County Louth, Droichead Art Centre in Drogheda, Kilruddery House and Garden in Bray, and in Dublin: the Talbot Street Gallery, the Dublin Food Coop, Trinity College, the Irish Writer's Centre, Temple Street Children's Hospital as part of the Helium Project and more recently in the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, with Clare Muireann Murphy. Fiona has also taken part in Storytelling in Education projects such as the "Story Spark" season of stories at the Ark in December 2010.
In October 2010 she was a featured teller at the Mohill Storytelling Festival.
This coming month she will travel to the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris to tell stories in French and English to children from bilingual families.
Story-O!
 | Alongside her solo storytelling activities, Fiona also performs with storytellers Michael Phelan, Eleonore Nicolas, Nina Tanis and Adam Wilson as "Story-O". The group is planning several storytelling events in Dublin for the coming months. For more information, please visit Story-O's blog. |