Loren Niemi is a professional storyteller, creating, collecting, performing, teaching and writing about what it means to be human with audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings for over four decades. He taught Storytelling in the Communications and Theater Programs of Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, MN) for 26 years and Stories for Mission and Brand in the University of St. Thomas Executive Leadership Institutes as well as providing organizational and corporate message framing, story-based consulting, training and presentation workshops around the country. In 2016 he was recipient of National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement award and founded the American School of Storytelling in 2021 offering on-line and in-person classes, workshops and performances of traditional, personal and business stories.

He is the co-author, with Elizabeth Ellis, of the critically acclaimed Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories on the value and necessity of the stories that are hard to heard and harder to tell and the author of two books on crafting stories: The New Book of Plots, on the uses of narratives in creating oral and written stories, and Point of View and the Emotional Arc of Stories which he co-authored with Nancy Donoval.

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).