Hannah Harvey Bio

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Hannah Harvey is an Appalachian storyteller whose energy is contagious.  Her stage-filling stories and award-winning teaching on the power of storytelling to shape individual and cultural identity have been performed on a variety of platforms, from The National Storytelling Festival to Yale University’s Psychiatric Grand Rounds; in national workshops for physicians and keynotes for leaders of multinational tech corporations; at festivals in the U.K. and Morocco; and in three courses on storytelling and folklore with The Great Courses.  With humor and gravity, she uses her Ph.D. in Performance Ethnography to trace the cultural roots of Appalachian folklore and connect this folk heritage with the lived histories of Appalachian people and places.  Her strong folk heroines rise from the rich cultural heritage of her native home in mountainous northeast TN.  Critics have called her work “very funny” (Theatre Guide London) and “deeply moving” (Classical Voice of North Carolina).  www.covestory.com

Harvey earned her Ph.D. in Communication Studies/Performance Ethnography at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she was also a teaching fellow, and her B.A. from Furman University.  She has been a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival and the International Storytelling Center’s Teller-in-Residence program.  Her U.K. performances as a member of NC-based Wordshed Productions earned a 5-star review in the British Theatre Guide.  Alongside her award-winning teaching at Kennesaw State University, she has led workshops in ethnographic storytelling at the National Storytelling Festival and other festivals; in the adaptation and performance of literature at the International Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland; and in cross-cultural storytelling at Hassan II University Ben M’Sik in Casablanca, Morocco. 

Hannah has performed in the U.S. and U.K.; has led storytelling workshops the U.S., U.K., and Morocco; and has been a featured teller at The National Storytelling Festival. As a scholar-artist, she studies storytelling as a pervasive cultural force and an everyday artistic practice. She is a past president of Storytelling in Higher Education, the professional organization for scholars of storytelling within the National Storytelling Network. Her streaming and DVD/audio courses on The Art of Storytelling: From Parents to Professionals (2013) and The Children’s Guide to Folklore and Wonder Tales (2017) are available from The Great Courses and GreatCoursesPlus.  She also was invited to create a Great Courses Audible Original on The Curious Origins of Holiday Traditions (2019).  Veterans Association Health Providers can access her co-taught course on Rural Healthcare and Story-Listening.  

Harvey’s research and teaching specialty is performance ethnography, which unites theatre with anthropology: scholars investigate everyday storytelling as an embodied cultural practice.  As a performance ethnographer, Hannah develops oral histories into theatrical and solo storytelling works that highlight the true stories of contemporary Appalachian people.  Her ongoing fieldwork with disabled coal miners in southwest Virginia culminated in a live ethnographic performance of their oral histories, Out of the Dark: The Oral Histories of Appalachian Coal Miners, earning Harvey a directing award from adjudicators at the American College Theatre Festival in 2007 and three year-end regional awards from professional critics in 2005. 

Hannah served for four years as Managing Editor of Storytelling, Self, Society journal (Wayne State University Press).  Her written research has been honored by the American Folklore Society and featured in Storytelling, Self, Society among other publications.  Her research has been presented at the National Communication Association, the Oral History Association, the International Festival of University Theatre (Casablanca, Morocco), and the Canadian Psychological Association on Gerontology. 

Hannah’s students selected her as an “Honor’s Program Distinguished Teacher” and for the “Alumni Association Commendation for Teaching Impact” for her teaching at Kennesaw State University.  Harvey is proud of her storytelling students’ achievements, from professional credits (including a 4-star review from The British Theatre Guide for her students’ group-storytelling adaptation of Beowulf); to intergenerational bridge-building (many of her courses invite and guide youth storytellers step-by-step to interview elders in their community and family); to just enjoying and becoming more critically aware of storytelling in their everyday lives.