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Biography | Resumé An award-winning, internationally known performer and recording artist, a published poet and author, and a teacher of her craft, Milbre Burch is a storyteller in every sense of the word. She is one of the preeminent interpreters of the stories of Jane Yolen as well as a teller of global folktales and original material. Born in Atlanta, GA, she left her native south to spend nearly a decade in Providence, RI, and then another decade in Pasadena, CA. She returned to the Southeast to live in July of 1999, before settling in the Midwest in 2003. That same summer Milbre received the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network. The Circle of Excellence Award is given to those who have created a body of work which is nationally recognized as a shining example of quality in the art form of storytelling performance. In October of 1999 she made her fifth highly acclaimed appearance as a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. For the last decade, Milbre has done much to move storytelling beyond the festival tent or church basement and onto the proscenium stage. To complement her storytelling concert work in educational and community settings, she created the THEATRE OF THE SPOKEN WORD in 1991. Her THEATRE OF THE SPOKEN WORD productions are developed as fully realized solo performances with sets, props and staging. Current repertoire includes five touring pieces including Mom's the Word: A Journey in Meter and Centimeters, exploring motherhood through myth and personal story; The Ready Heart, featuring the literary fairytales and other writings of award-winning American author Jane Yolen; The Word is the Storyteller's Village, a pastiche of multicultural folktales; In the Family Way, weaving family stories with folktales about family relationships; and Saint and Other Sinners, combining saint stories and original monologues to explore the miracle of small human kindnesses. She also tours The Mary Stories, her quartet of original pieces about the mother of a Messiah. These shows have been presented in part or in their entirety by the Hiddenite Center, Inc. in Hiddenite, NC; the High Point Theatre Cabaret, High Point, NC; Appalachian State University, Boone, NC; the Diocese of Saginaw, MI; Caltech Public Events, Pasadena, CA; the Chappaqua (NY), Beverly Hills and Monterey (CA) Public Libraries; the Hollywood Literary Retreat; the LA Women's Theatre Festival; the 14th Street Playhouse and the Lutheran Church of the Apostles, both in Atlanta, GA; the Indianapolis Art Museum and Cafe Patachou in Indianapolis, IN; the Betty Weeks Storytelling Conference for Educators at National-Louis University in Evanston, IL; the University of San Diego; the Family Business Seminar; California Plaza Presents; Sushi Performance and Visual Art, San Diego, CA; Occidental College in Los Angeles; the Del Norte Association for Cultural Awareness in Del Norte, CA; the Washington (DC) Storytellers' Theatre; the National Storytelling Festival and festivals in Utah, Nevada and Mississippi ; and at Folke Tegetthoff's Die Lange Nacht Der Marchenerzahler in Austria among others. From the fall of 1997 to the spring of 1999, Milbre co-directed the Storytelling Project of the Cotsen Children's Library associated with Princeton University. Working with her journalist husband, Berkley Hudson, she assembled a first-rank collection of archival materials about the American storytelling revival. To this end, the pair traveled throughout America interviewing selected storytellers and recording their performances on digital video. They collected audio, video and print storytelling resources and began a biographical directory of storytellers as well. The two made a presentation about their findings at the 1999 National Storytelling Conference in San Diego and returned to keynote a General Session at the National Storytelling Conference in Kingsport, TN, in July, 2,000. In June of 1998, Milbre completed a three-year California Arts Council (CAC) artist-in-residence at the Walden School in Pasadena. During the residency she taught classroom workshops and adult education classes, hosted visiting artists, and directed the Walden Story Weavers, a multi-age student storytelling troupe which tours the Pasadena Public Library system with free performances. Following the residency she worked with Walden staff as a Language and Literature Consultant, and continues to work with Walden director Dr. Carol Per Lee on a written teaching model based on residency activities. An adjunct professor of Children's Speech Arts in the Communications Studies department at California State University -- Los Angeles, from 1996-99, she also worked as a visiting artist in Arts-in-Corrections program at the California Rehabilitation Center and in Wasco, CA. Milbre has been an artist-in-residence since 1978, working for the state and local arts councils in Utah, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Rhode Island and California. Her students have been mainstream Pre-K to 12th grades as well as ESL, hearing impaired and developmentally disabled children of all ages; at-risk teens; well elders; mentally challenged adults; minimum and maximum security prison inmates; college students, conference attendees, fellow tellers, family business owners, therapists, ministers, rabbis and lay people, and countless teachers earning CEU's. In 1995 she conducted workshops for the National Endowment for the Humanities National Conversations' project at Occidental College. Twice awarded artist fellowships by the City of Pasadena Arts Division, she was lead artist in three community-based multi-residencies for the City of Pasadena and has taught or toured with the Lincoln Center Institute in New York, the LA Music Center on Tour, the Performing Tree and the University of Phoenix. In the spring of 1994 and again in 1997, she participated in an international storytelling festival in Graz, Austria. With her thirteen audio-recordings, she has garnered Parent's Choice Classic, Gold and Approved Awards, as well as a NAPPA Gold Award, and a Storytelling World Honor, and was twice a finalist for an INDI award from the Association For Independent Music. With a reputation as an award-winning recording artist, Burch is a sought-after consultant for and judge of spoken word audio recordings. Milbre's stories, poems and articles have appeared in print in newspapers, magazines and books since 1988. The most recent of these include "Sop Doll," a short story published in Realms of Fantasy Magazine in April, 2000; "Rapunzel," a poem published in Storytelling Magazine in May/June, 2000 and "Pine Trees for Sale," a folktale retold in More Ready-to-Tell Tales, edited by David Holt and Bill Mooney for August House Publishers also in 2000. She wrote the cover story article, A Storytelling Artist at Work, for Storytelling World Magazine in 1996. Two of her poems were featured in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for Avo-Nova Books in 1995. Her story Metamorphosis, (from Xanadu II, edited by Jane Yolen for St. Martin's Press) was a James Tiptree, Jr., Award Finalist in 1994. Remaining bi-coastal after her move from the West Coast, Milbre is currently working with Gay Ducey on a folktale collection called Mother's Milk: Folktales of Mothers and Motherhood for August House Publishers. A veteran of storytelling, theatre and spoken word festivals
in 22 states and 12 European cities, Milbre Burch lives with
her husband, a professor of journalism, their two daughters and
a Border Terrier under the huge blue sky of Columbia, MO. Biography | Resumé EDUCATION Duke University, B.A., cum laude, Political Science, 1975. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Associate Director. The Storytelling Project of the Cotsen Children's Library of Los Angeles. Archival documentary project: 1997-present. Freelance Writer. 1988-present.
Credits include:
Credits include:
Credits include:
Awards include:
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