Master Talesman Odds Bodkin is a storyteller, children’s
author, musician and educator. His unique performance
art – telling stories with hundreds of character voices,
amazing vocal effects and live, muse-inspired music – has
been mesmerizing audiences since 1982. His original
musical accompaniments on 12-string and electric guitar, Celtic harp, African thumb piano and other instruments flavor each tale with a movie-like score creating a cinematic experience for the imagining listener.
Twice the subject of Lincoln Center Institute in New York’s Window on the Work, he has performed twice at The White House, at the National Storytelling Festival, in Thailand and Great Britain and across America at schools, museums, universities and festivals. As artist-in-residence at venues as diverse as Emerson College in England, world headquarters of the Waldorf Schools, to the International Storytelling Center in Tennessee, Odds is renowned for his epic tales––The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Rage of Hercules––yet he nevertheless creates an atmosphere so warm for little children that he routinely holds Pre-K through 3rd graders happily spellbound for an hour. This “bardic spell” hearkens back to the earliest storytellers, like Homer, who plucked a lyre and used character voices. Similarly, as Billboard writes, “Odds Bodkin is a modern-day Orpheus.” Find numerous Bodkin videos on YouTube.
Recently Odds appeared twice on NPR’s Cambridge Forum, while Wired magazine called him one of the “great voices” in modern storytelling. TimeOut New York calls him “a one-man vocal universe . . .the talk of the town.” USA Today says, “Seldom are storytellers so vivid and entertaining.” The New York Times calls him “a consummate storyteller.”
THE VANISHERS: THE APP THAT BRINGS OBJECTS TO LIFE takes Odds’ storytelling and composing ability to new heights in a new iPhone/iTouch app for museums and other institutions with collections to share.
For seven years running, both St. Anselm College and Franklin Pierce University have invited him to perform The Iliad: Book I, his hour-long tour de force adaptation of Homer. He has performed or taught at Harvard, Syracuse (numerous return visits), Dartmouth, Colorado College, Loyola University Maryland (return visits), Boston University, Ohio Dominican University, Wofford College (Phi Beta Kappa Convocation), College of the Atlantic, Arizona State University, Purdue, St. Anselm College, Nichols College, East Tennessee State University and others, as well as numerous appearances for the New England Classical Association. He earned rave reviews from the New York press for his Off-Broadway series, Art of the Tale, at Lincoln Center. For seven years Odds taught storytelling, imagination and mythology at Antioch New England Graduate School (now University) in the Education and Environmental Studies departments and continues to teach novice and advanced storytellers in his Door to Imagination Workshops. As Storyteller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee, he packed the house.
Organizations that have commissioned original stories by Odds Bodkin include Target Stores, The United Way, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, The Algonquin Theater, The Perkins School for the Blind, Boston University, St. Paul’s School, The Rochester Dance Company,The Peabody Essex Museum and The Brookstone Company. Recently The Fay School commissioned Beowulf, Odds’ newest mythic work.
His picture books include The Banshee Train (Houghton Mifflin), The Crane Wife (Harcourt Brace), The Christmas Cobwebs (Harcourt Brace) and Ghost of the Southern Belle
(Little, Brown).
His recordings and books have won Indie awards, Parents’ Choice Gold and Silver awards, Storytelling World awards, the Dove Foundation award, Booklist’s Editors’ Choice, the New York Public Library’s “100 Best Titles for Reading and Sharing” award, The Children’s Music Web Award and AudioWorld’s Golden Headset Award, among others.
Mr. Bodkin is the creator of YOUNG HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY BULLY, a Program for Learning Empathy.
Mr. Bodkin is a graduate of Duke University. He lives with his wife, Miguelina, in New Hampshire. He is the proud father of three grown sons, Jonathan, Gavin and Christopher.
