Nancy Schimmel started telling and reading stories to children as a summer camp counselor when she was in high school and college. After becoming a children’s librarian, she became a traveling storyteller, song-leader, and teacher of storytelling for children and adults. She was a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN. She wrote a how-to book, Just Enough to Make a Story: A Sourcebook for Storytelling. While on the road, she started to write songs, as her mother, Malvina Reynolds of “Little Boxes” fame, had done. Her 1992 album for children, All in This Together, won a Parents’ Choice Award, and another, Head First and Belly Down, was an American Library Association notable recording. She spent her tween and teen years in Long Beach, California, where she climbed the cliffs and rocks by the ocean. She now lives in Berkeley, California.