Read more
Story Harvest - a bountiful harvest of traditional oral folk tales from Scotland and the world
David Campbell began life in Edinburgh, spending his youth in Scotland's storied Northeast. Here he developed the athletic and academic skills which would one day lead him all over the world as an acclaimed storyteller.
Throughout his long life, David has been called to word-smithing in many forms: as teacher, poet, BBC broadcaster, writer and acclaimed storyteller. His early talents in athletics are perhaps not surprising, as David Campbell is a cousin once-removed from the famous Scottish Olympic sprinter and Christian missionary Eric Liddell, whose story David shares in this collection from the viewpoint of family.
Friendships with the master storyteller and Scottish Traveller Duncan Williamson, and many other vibrant tellers from widely-varied oral traditions, have inspired David's own warm and naturally engaging storytelling style, which translates beautifully in this collection of written tales. Along with poetically-rendered folk tales, historical Scottish lore, poetry and traditional oral stories captured in Story Harvest, David generously shares his professional storytelling tips for those of his readers who might like to try a little storytelling of their own.
David has chosen a selection of his favourite stories for Story Harvest: whimsical, humorous, tragic and beautiful tales that deserve to be remembered and told again and again.
When not travelling about with his magic bag of stories, David Campbell makes his home in the grand Scottish city where he began life - Edinburgh, Scotland. You can often find David holding forth, sharing advice and making folk laugh with his ribald jokes at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, where he is a regular and much-loved storyteller and mentor.
About the author
After high school I worked on crews that travelled the U.S. doing field work for topographic maps. At age 21 I decided to be a painter and went to the Art Students League in New York, an atelier school in which students choose artist/instructors and work in studios free of academic requirements. I soon learned I would be a landscape painter (my preference for the outdoors asserting itself). During my second year at the League I was drafted into the Army for 2 years- in Korea for one of those years. Upon discharge I went to Italy, worked at landscape painting and discovered my passion for poetry, learning what I could by reading the great poetry of the past. In Florence I married an Englishwoman and had one daughter. Eventually we decided to separate. I returned to the U.S. after 7 years, realizing that in Italy I would forever be a visitor, and to develop in art I had to live within my native culture and landscape. I have lived in New York, Maine and now Massachusetts, making a living as a housepainter and carpenter, all the while continuing to write and paint, showing in New York and Boston galleries and beginning to publish poems, eventually in the Goose River annual Anthologies, leading up to this, my first published collection. I am married to Patricia Cobb, a visual artist, and we have two grown daughters.
