THE BIOLOGY OF STORY SELF-STUDY COURSE

Amnon Buchbinder is the Writer-Director of Biology of Story. He has directed three feature films: the docu-myth Travelling Medicine Show, and the theatrical releases Whole New Thing and The Fishing Trip. He has written many screenplays and story edited hundreds more, is the author of The Way of the Screenwriter (House of Anansi Press) and the novel Mortal Coil. He is Associate Professor in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University.

Born in Pointe-Noire, Congo Brazzaville, Jean Pierre Makosso was taught by his mother MA M’KAYI and is from a family-based and traditional background. Enrolled in an occidental school system, he has in his pragmatic journey been listening and observing. Throughout his schooling, he quickly displayed his taste for the word to become the griot of those who do not have one. As a theatre director and actor, he has toured the world three times with Company Punta-Négra (Congo), Théâtre du Corps (France), and Théâtre Amiel (Switzerland).

Living in Canada since 2001, he works with Traditional Company Masabo and also writes and directs plays for Canada world youth. As writer and poet he has written La voix du Conteur (French short stories), Le cri du triangle (French poetry), Human Works (English poetry), and Il était une fois...ce jour-là (French novel), published by Éditions Dédicaces in Montréal.

Website: Makossovillage.com

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy. Capra is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, and Learning from Leonardo. He is coauthor, with Pier Luigi Luisi, of the multidisciplinary textbook, The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Marina Cantacuzino is a British journalist who in 2003, in response to the imminent invasion of Iraq, embarked on a personal project collecting stories in words and portraits of people who had lived through violence or injustice and sought forgiveness rather than revenge. As a result Marina founded The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based not-for-profit that uses the real stories of victims and perpetrators to explore how ideas around forgiveness and reconciliation can be used to impact positively on people’s lives. In 2015 Marina’s book The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) was published in the US and UK.

Website: TheForgivenessProject.com

Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, storyteller and healer. Story is her medicine. Her latest novels are Feral and La Negra y Blanca, both published by Hand to Hand, 2011. La Negra y Blanca won the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. The novels The Other Hand and Doors: A fiction for Jazz Horn, and her new and selected poems, Ruin and Beauty are published by Red Hen Press. Writing For Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds is a text that articulates these possibilities for fellow writers and as do her plays Not As Sleepwalkers and Dreams Against the State. She co-edited an anthology, Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals, one of the first testimonies to the reality and nature of animal intelligence. Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing and From Grief into Vision: A Council examine the tragic failure of contemporary culture and provide guidance for personal, political, environmental and spiritual healing.

The only West Point graduate to turn professional storyteller, Kendall Haven also holds an advanced degree in Oceanography and spent eight years as a Senior Research Scientist for the Department of Energy before finding his true passion for storytelling and a very different kind of “truth.” He has performed for 6.5 million in 44 states; and conducted his break-through writing workshops for over 560,000 students and 80,000 teachers. He has published 34 books including over 300 original stories plus his break-through instructional books on narrative creation, writing, and storytelling. Haven has won over forty awards for his story writing and telling, including the 2014 Leo Poletti Award, and has twice been designated an American Library Association “Notable Recording Artist.” An internationally recognized expert on story structure and story science, Haven’s research is presented in his books, Story Proof and (the most recent) Story Smart, both published by Libraries Unlimited. Haven regularly consults as a story strategist for government science agencies (NASA, NOAA, DoD, EPA, NPS) and major corporations on their use of story.

Website: KendallHaven.com

Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, grew up in Trinidad, and moved to Canada more than thirty years ago. She is a fiction writer, visual artist, video maker whose visual artwork and video work have been exhibited in Canada and internationally, most notably at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Queens Museum, NYC, and at the Venice Biennale. Mootoo’s writing includes short stories, poetry and the novels Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab longlisted for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize

Keith Oatley is a psychologist and novelist. His main research has been on the psychology of emotions, and the psychology of fiction. He is the author of seven books of psychology, that have included Such Stuff as Dreams: The psychology of fiction. Among his recent books is The Passionate Muse: Exploring emotion in stories (Oxford University Press), a novella with psychological commentaries. The first of Keith¹s novels, The Case of Emily V., won a Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel. His most recent novel is Therefore Choose (Goose Lane Publications).

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Website: www.Google.com/KeithOatley

Born in Dublin, Clare Murphy now lives in London. Storytelling is what Clare does for a living. She performs around the world in all kinds of wild places like volcanic cellars, in ancient round towers, art centres, universities, theatres, schools, libraries, festivals, beaches. She tells stories from ancient to modern, from myth to original tales, and for all ages.

She has had the joy of working with many fabulous companies and institutions including The Globe Theatre, The National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Ark Dublin, Vanderbilt University, The Story Museum Oxford, and the National Museum of Ireland to name a few.

Website: ClareMurphy.org

Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL (born 19 October 1946) is a British writer. He is the author of several best-selling books, most notably the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and the fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". Northern Lights, the first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, won the 1995 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding English-language children's book. For the 70th anniversary of the Medal it was named one of the top ten winning works by a panel, composing the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. Northern Lights won the public vote from that shortlist and was thus named the all-time "Carnegie of Carnegies" on 21 June 2007. It has been adapted as a film under its U.S. title, The Golden Compass.

Richard Theodore Tarnas (born February 21, 1950) is a cultural historian known for his books "The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View" and "Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View." Tarnas is Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is the founding director of its Graduate Program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.

Jane Riddiford is a founding director of Environmental Education Charity Global Generation (www.globalgeneration.org.uk). She has 25 years of experience in delivering environmental, arts & vocational training projects in New Zealand & the UK. Her interest in young people and projects that bring different parts of the community together has been a consistent thread throughout her working life. Her love of the outdoors and awareness of detrimental agricultural practices began as a child growing up on a farm in New Zealand. She is currently completing a Doctorate in Organisational Change at Ashridge. Her research focusses on the potentials for leadership in moving from a view of the universe as a machine of separate parts to a living story which endlessly reveals the dynamics of an integrated whole.

Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair is Anishinaabe (St. Peter's/Little Peguis,) the head of the department of Native Studies and an Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba. He is a regular commentator on Indigenous issues on CTV, CBC, and APTN, and his written work can be found in the pages of The Exile Edition of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama, newspapers like The Guardian, and online with CBC Books: Canada Writes. Niigaan is the co-editor of the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press, 2011) and Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press, 2013), and is the Editorial Director of The Debwe Series with Portage and Main Press.

Full bio coming soon.

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 11 books, including Science Set Free (called The Science Delusion in the UK). He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, Principal Plant Physiologist at ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in Hyderabad, India, and from 2005-2010 the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California, and a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut.

Website: Sheldrake.org