Heather Joseph-Witham is a folklorist with a love for fairy tales and myths, festivities, rituals and all things macabre, paranormal, Victorian and Disneyesque. She received her Bachelors in Political Science from UCLA, and her Masters and PhD in Folklore and Mythology in 1998, also from UCLA, where she taught introductory Folklore courses. 

Heather has worked at OTIS College of Art and Design since 1998 and is an Associate Professor in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Department. She has been the coordinator for a number of department sections, including: Cultural Studies, Capstone, Social Science and Creative Action programming. She also created the OTIS Storytelling Festival which ran for 5 years and brought students and the community together for a joyous expression of creativity and tale-telling. 

Heather has appeared as a folklore expert and storyteller on a number of podcasts, radio shows, television programs and comicons. These include Mythbusters, KCET’s Artbound and a host of different shows on Discovery, the History Channel, the Food Network, TLC and others. Heather’s book Star Trek Fans and Costume Art was one of the first works to acknowledge cosplay as a meaningful art form. 

At the moment, she is working on creating a new podcast called Folklore Bytes and has started fieldwork and primary research for a second book regarding the vampire called Father Sebastiaan. She also has plans to work on a book regarding rape narratives embedded in fairy tales through a feminist lens.

She’s the author of the screenplay for the award-winning short horror / comedy film Down and Out in Vampire Hills, and is at work on another script called The Portal, about a celebrity chef, a country cult and a demonic portal.