Carolyn Eve Kanjuro has been a writer, director, and creative collaborator for over 30 years. She is an author of several books and has worked in audio, video, interactive media, and live performance.

She’s had a few different lives, including director/playwright for Golden Key Theater, maker of archival quality, limited edition books, director of an award-winning audio series with storytellers from around the world, and translator and wife to Kanjuro Shibata XX, Sensei, a 20th generation master of kyudo, the way of the bow. (You can read about his teachings on her blog Ten Years, One Step.)

She lives near Boulder, Colorado and has a BFA in Experimental Theater from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

CREATIONS

What’s coming in 2020 and a glimpse of prior works

THE MONKEY MIND MEDITATION DECK: 30 Fun Ways for Kids to Chill Out, Tune In, and Open Up

(Shambhala Publications/Bala Kids). Illustrations by Alexander Vidal. Cards are 5X7. Order now from Shambhala Publications or Amazon.

SIT WITH ME: Buddhist Meditation for Kids

You can squat like a frog or hang like a bat, but if you want to sit like a buddha, there are seven key points to taking your seat. Sit With Me invites children of all ages to discover how placing their butts on the ground can be strangely profound.

Illustrations by Nan Lawson. Available December 2020 (Bala Kids). Winner of the Khyentse Foundation Children’s Book Prize. (Read an interview about the prize.)

Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland

Co-authored with renowned Irish seanachie Eddie Lenihan. (Tarcher/Putnam).

Buy on Amazon

“This is not quaint fluff but the powerful, sometimes disturbing lore of a world parallel to and occasionally intersecting ours. A major contribution to its field, the book is also compulsively readable …”

— BOOKLIST (starred review)

“Thorough, nicely arranged, with a minimum of editorial intrusions (footnotes, annotations, etc.) and free of the New Age cant that has infected so many contemporary accounts of traditional folklore.”

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

Chrysanthemum Books

I launched Chrysanthemum Books to create high end, archival quality, limited editions for special projects. The first inspiration was to bring the calligraphies and teachings of Kyudo Master Kanjuro Shibata XX, Sensei into book form. Sensei had long resisted offers by traditional publishers, determined never to commercialize his teachings. When I proposed a book for a very limited audience, crafted with the same care and attention he applied to making a yumi (Japanese bow), he agreed – and Chrysanthemum Books was born.

Sei Ran, Sky Storm: calligraphies and teachings by Kanjuro Shibata XX, Sensei

Limited edition of 108 at $350 each. SOLD OUT.

Yumi Dance: Chronicle of a Spiritual Emergency

A memoir by Carolyn Kanjuro. Limited edition of 108 at $150. SOLD OUT.

As Creative Director for Secrets of the World, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with some of the most compelling and talented storytellers around the world: Laura Simms shares tales of the Jews and Gypsies from the Black Sea; seanachie Eddie Lenihan enlightens us about the fairies of Ireland; Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock offers stories, songs, and poems from the African American tradition; Johnny Moses carries the tradition of healing with stories from the First People of the Pacific Northwest – and more. Each of these 90-minute collections includes both traditional oral tales and intimate accounts from the tellers’ own lives growing up in their cultural communities.

“...a first-rate collection, a magic carpet ride across cultures.”

— philadelphia inquirer

“...an excellent purchase.”

— school library journal

LISTEN to samples and get digital downloads from our online store!

“...spellbinding collection”

— publishers' weekly

“...a storytelling audio experience that is a treasure of intimacy, vitality, and vision.”

— AudioFile Magazine

A few of my Clients & Collaborators over the years…