LAURA BELLE NELSON
Minneapolis, MN
lnelson@msbcollege.edu

INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION

I am originally from northern Minnesota, and have lived in North Dakota and Oregon in addition to Minnesota since graduation from college with my teaching degree. I am a librarian at the Minnesota School of Business, and a full-time graduate student at the University of North Texas.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

M.S. Candidate in Library and Information Science
University of North Texas
School of Library and Information Sciences
Denton, Texas

M.S. Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Capella University, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Harold Abel School of Psychology

B.A. Elementary Education, Music
Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota
School of Education

STORYTELLING INTERESTS

My grandmother used to dress me up like Little Red Riding Hood and made my younger brother wear a fur cap to be the wolf. She would also make us watch filmstrips of Peter and the Wolf and The Nutcracker on white sheets tacked to a wall in her living room. Since those early moments, performance and the appreciation of it has been a mandate in our lives. Though teaching was not a career long in duration for me, my moments of reading aloud to children, making stories and reading interesting to them were the best-spent moments in all of those two years. After beginning my Library and Information Science degree, I found myself in a storytelling class, and am currently learning how to turn my written abilities into performances that remind me of those days spent in a red cape.

My interests in storytelling are broad. I find that telling my own spun stories has been the highlight of my experience. I hope to publish someday, and look forward to reading my own work to an audience. Through working orally in storytelling, new ideas have come at me from place I never knew existed, just by working them out verbally. In the near future, I hope to practice my storytelling skills as a volunteer storyteller in the Minneapolis Public Library system, and as a children’s librarian.

MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION

I am an artist, amateur film critic and band groupie. I work in many art media, including but not limited to glass mosaic, stained glass, painting, drawing, collage art, and furniture design/building. The inspiration for many of my stories begins with an illustration or two. Films have also become a passion in my life, as I love the way the film industry captures the human condition in such a universally appealing art form. The moment when a filmmaker can do something that no one else has done in quite the same way, or create something that sets the genre on its ear are both moments to which I look forward immensely. Finally, I am an almost 30-year-old groupie. Having gone to a college that is prized for its music program, I am left with very talented musician friends, whose shows I enjoy and attend whenever I can. Sometimes, they even let me carry the drums to the van. Sometimes not.