Who is Karen Gummo?

For more than thirty years, Karen Gummo has performed far and wide as a creative storyteller, probing her Scandinavian heritage, seeking to learn and decipher world wisdom, and undertaking many school residencies. In these residencies, Karen has encouraged students and teachers to discover the power of their own voice as storytellers and visual artists by modelling her own skills, through teaching games, and by offering artistic explorations.  

In addition to her work in schools, she has performed at a variety of venues – from CBC Radio to bookstores, pubs, cafes, seniors’ lodges, churches, hospice, historic sites, libraries and for conferences. With the Canadian Children’s Book Centre annual tour, Karen visited Newfoundland in 2004 and southern Ontario in 2017. In 2015, she travelled to Iceland where she was honoured to present both traditional and family sagas. She is getting to know intimately her home province of Alberta through the Wordpower and Taleblazers programs organized by YABS.

In 2017, Karen launched a picture book called Ladybird Fly, a wisdom tale combining family adventure with magic that she wrote and illustrated. Other stories by Karen have been published in anthologies and on CDs.

Karen holds Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees from the University of Calgary. She is a founding member and former President of Storytelling Alberta (formerly TALES) and has served as the western representative of the national Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada organization.