Jo Radner

I have been studying, teaching, creating, telling, and collecting stories most of my life, and have performed from Maine to Hawaii to Finland. After a Harvard Ph.D. and 31 years’ teaching at American University in Washington, DC, I took early retirement and moved back to my family’s home region, western Maine, for a second freelance career.

I am a folklorist, a storyteller, an oral historian, and a writer.

My first CD, Yankee Ingenuity: Stories of Headstrong and Resourceful People, received a 2013 Storytelling World Award; my second, Burnt into Memory: How Brownfield Faced the Fire, received the Storytelling World Award in 2019.

My new book is Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023).

I received the Brother Blue and Ruth Hill Award from the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling, “in recognition of extraordinary commitment, dedication and loving encouragement to the New England storytelling community.” I am past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network.