Niemi will be the featured teller at the free Story Swap, Tuesday, February 18th at 7 p.m. in the Carver room of the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.

“I began as a child fibber but soon discovered that I was less interested in telling lies than I was in improving the truth.”

Loren Niemi has spent forty years as an innovative storyteller creating, coaching/directing, performing and teaching stories about what matters to audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings. He has performed on the Great Wall of China, been the Humanities Scholar in Residence for Northern Minnesota, worked with Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, Northern Ireland to tell the stories of “the Troubles” and appeared the stages of Fringe Festivals across the country. His work has been called “post-modern,” “with the dark beauty of language that is not ashamed of poetry.”

He teaches Storytelling in the Executive Leadership Institute of the University of St. Thomas (St.Paul, MN) as well as providing storytelling workshops and organizational consulting around the country. Previous clients have included the Sonofi-Aventus pharmaceuticals, UNUM Insurance, Medtronic, the 5th District Federal Reserve Bank, the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, the National Legal Aid & Public Defenders Association and Walt Disney World.

Loren’s collection of ghost stores, What Haunts Us (Moonfire Press) is a mix of recounted oral history and philosophically leaning fiction came out in February 2019. He previously authored the award winning The New Book of Plots, (Parkhurst Brothers Publishing) on the uses of narrative in shaping meaningful stories and is the co-author, with Elizabeth Ellis, of Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, (August House Publishers) the critically acclaimed text on the value and necessity of telling the stories that are hard to speak and uncomfortable to hear. Loren is also a published poet including a chapbook, Coyote Flies Coach from Sister Black Press and a Frequent performer interchangeably offering storytelling and poetry at curated and slam venues. He is a storytelling “activist” who was one of the founders of the Northlands Storytelling Network, a five state storytelling educational and advocacy organization, and served six years on the National Storytelling Network’s Board of Director. This included four as the Chair of the 1200 plus member organization that has been the advocate and promoter of America’s storytelling revival. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Story Arts Minnesota.

In 2016 he was awarded a National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement award. Loren has a BA (Philosophy and Studio Arts) from St. Mary’s University (Winona, MN) and a MA in Liberal Studies (American Culture) from Hamline University (St. Paul, MN).

Open Mic

After a short refreshment break, there is an open mic session for anyone to step up and share a short tale. See our webpage, Guidelines for storytellers.