Gioia Timpanelli is the author of two books: Sometimes the Soul: Two Novellas of Sicily, winner of the American Book Award, and What Makes a Child Lucky, to be published in Fall 2008. Called the “dean of American storytelling,” Timpanelli has performed and presented world literature and poetry for NPR, PBS, and groups and conferences nationwide and internationally. She won two Emmy Awards for her series of programs on storytelling, Stories from My House, received the prestigious Woman’s National Book Association Award for bringing the oral tradition to the American public, and recently earned the Maharishi Award for “promoting world harmony wherever she goes by enlivening within the listener that field of pure consciousness that is the source of all stories.”