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Geeta Ramanujam is a master storyteller, trainer, founder and executive director of Kathalaya’s International Academy of Storytelling and Kathalaya Trust. She is also an academician and administrator with twenty-three years of experience in storytelling. A pioneer of the storytelling movement in India, Geeta has defined and evolved the ancient art of storytelling through workshops and certified courses, covering over 93,491 adults and 5,00,000 children so far. Geeta has travelled to forty-three countries and twenty-seven states in India to groom professional tellers, all the while sowing seeds of storytelling around the world for the last forty years.
Kathalaya’s International Academy of Storytelling is the only globally recognized academy for storytelling in the world with accredited courses affiliated to USA, Scotland and Sweden. Geeta has trained and completed 172 batches of certified beginners and diploma courses as of December 2021. Geeta is an Ashoka Fellow and has won several accolades for storytelling, including the Best Story Narrator award from the Governor of Tamil Nadu and the Boca do Céu-Encontro Internacional de Contadores de Histórias Storyteller Award in Brazil. Kathalaya was also listed in the Limca Book of Records for having organized the first international storytelling festival in India in 2005.
Geeta has written The Wise Monkey and Other Animal Stories, which was published in 2002 by Puffin Books. Tales from the World is her second offering.