BIO

African Storyteller and English Professor, Dr. Harriet Masembe is a graduate of Makere University, Uganda, and studied at Sheffield University and at the University of Wisconsin, where she graduated with a Ph.D. in African Literature.

She was a featured storyteller at the Olympics arts festival, and has appeared on TV programs throughout the United States. Her program on Africa has been acclaimed by several newspapers including The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Herald.

She was also commissioned to write a play for the Boston Museum of Science, UNICEF, Uganda, and UAAF, London. In 1987 Masembe wrote a story line for a movie on teenage pregnancy in African counties.

Masembe has given lectures on African Oral Literature at several universities including: Stanford, USC, Cal Tech, Cornell University and the University of Vermont. Videotapes of her storytelling are available for use in classrooms.

Masembe was a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Afro-American Studies Department and at the Boston College English Department and Norfolk University She has performed African folktales for the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African American Research conferences in Spain, France and England.

(Biography reprinted courtesy of www.apbspeakers.com)