We are honored to publish this first tape with Gioia, who has been telling for over 20 years. In an afternoon and evening of improvisational storytelling, she performed a diverse and mesmerizing selection of stories: traditional Sicilian folktales; the Grimms' versions of "Cinderella" and "The Shoemaker and the Elves" (the first story Gioia remembers as a child); nature stories; and personal stories from her childhood in Brooklyn. Gioia expresses a reverence for the natural world. Her stories honor the ways the ordinary holds extraordinary things and the ways extraordinary things are made of the ordinary.