- Utah Phillips
Bruce "Utah" Phillips (b. May 15 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio) is a labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and self-described "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest". He describes the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action. He often promotes the Industrial Workers of the World in his music, actions, and words. Utah Phillips' given name is Bruce Phillips. A fan of T. Texas Tyler, Phillips adopted the stage name U. Utah Phillips.
- Bill Harley
Bill Harley is a children's entertainer who has been called "the Mark Twain of contemporary children's music" by Entertainment Weekly. He uses a range of musical styles and appeals to children and adults with quirky, heart-filled lyrics. He received the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album For Children (albums consisting of predominantly spoken word versus music or song) for his "Blah Blah Blah: Stories About Clams, Swamp Monsters, Pirates & Dog".
- David Holt
David Holt is a four-time Grammy Award winner for his work as a musician. He is dedicated to performing and preserving traditional American music and stories. Holt plays ten acoustic instruments and has released numerous recordings of traditional mountain music and southern folktales. He also hosts a jazz program for public radio, Riverwalk, as well as a television program on folk music and culture on North Carolina public television, Folkways.
- Kathryn Tucker Windham
Kathryn Tucker Windham (born June 2, 1918) is a storyteller, author, photographer, and journalist. She was born in Selma, Alabama and was raised in nearby Thomasville. Tucker got her first writing job at the age of 12, reviewing movies for her cousin's small town newspaper, "The Thomasville Times". She earned a B.A. degree from Huntingdon College in 1939. Soon after graduating she became a reporter for the Alabama Journal.
- Odds Bodkin
Odds Bodkin, born February 14, 1953, is a New Hampshire based storyteller who has published a number of spoken and/or musical interpretations of traditional tales, as well as a number of tales that he, himself, has created. His version of "Little Proto and the Volcano’s Fire" was awarded the Parent’s Choice Silver Award. Odds and his family live in Bradford, New Hampshire.
- Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames is an American author who has written a number of novels and comic memoirs. He is known for his self-deprecating tales of his sexual misadventures. He was a columnist for the "New York Press" for several years, during which time he wrote about his childhood neuroses and his unusual experiences in the gritty tradition of Charles Bukowski. These columns were collected in three nonfiction books, …
- Rosalie Sorrels
Rosalie Sorrels (1933 -) is an American folk singer-songwriter who resides in the mountains near Boise, Idaho. She began her public career as a singer and collector of traditional folksongs in the late 1950s. During the early 1960s she left her husband and began traveling and performing at music festivals and clubs throughout the United States. Her first major performance was at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966. After co-authoring several books, Sorrels was nominated for the Grammy in 2005.
- Linda Hogan
Linda Hogan (born 1947) is a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories.
- Syd Lieberman
Syd Lieberman is a noted American storyteller who has been telling stories professionally since 1982. He is a frequent performer at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. In 2007, Lieberman became the first professional storyteller in the United States to make all tracks from his previously released 14 CDs and cassettes available for free downloading from his website via a Creative commons license (by-nc-nd).
- Hugh Lupton
Hugh Lupton is one of the most prominent figures in the Oral Storytelling Tradition. He co-founded the Company of Storytellers (with Ben Haggerty and Pomme Clayton) in 1985. Lupton tells a wide variety of stories, including Epics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also collections of shorter stories such as "I become part of it (tales from the pre-world)" and "The Three Snake Leaves (tales from the Grimm Forest)".
- Carmen Agra Deedy
Carmen Agra Deedy is an internationally known author of children’s literature, a storyteller and radio contributor. Born in Havana, Cuba, she immigrated to the United States with her family in 1963 after the Cuban Revolution. Deedy grew up in Decatur, Georgia and currently lives in Atlanta and has three daughters.
- Antonio Sacre
Antonio Sacre (born 1968) is a bilingual storyteller, author and performance artist. He has written 10 plays and over 30 stories, and performs at storytelling festivals and Fringe Festivals. He is a member of the Redmoon Theater company in Chicago, Illinois. A children's book author, his story "The Barking Mouse" is winner of the 2004 International Reading Association Notable Books for a Global Society.
- Andy Offutt Irwin
Andy Offutt Irwin (born 1957) is an American storyteller, arts educator and singer-songwriter. Irwin began his career in 1984 in an improvisational comedy troupe but after five years he shifted to performing as a singer-songwriter, touring the Southeast for about six years. In the mid-1990s, he branched into performances for children and since then has appeared in hundreds of schools (from preschools to colleges) and countless public libraries.
- Spencer Holst
Spencer Holst (1926 - 2001) was an American writer and storyteller. Though he published several collections of stories, as well as volumes of translations, Holst was known primarily for the captivating live performances of his work that he regularly conducted, particularly in the New York City area, in a distinctive mellifluous, rhythmically cadenced voice. In his heyday he was often heard on the radio on New York's listener-sponsored radio station, WBAI.
- Graham Langley
Graham Langley is an English storyteller with an international reputation for his innovative work in storytelling. Described by The Times as “a storyteller for the 21st century” he is much in demand both in Britain and abroad. He is also a producer of live or oral literature events. With Storytelling Cafe he has established the only recognisable storytelling brand in the UK, bringing the best local, national and international traditional performances to the Midlands and beyond.
- Sheldon Oberman
Sheldon Oberman (May 20, 1949 - March 26, 2004) was an award-winning Canadian children's writer who lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Born in Winnipeg, Oberman (known to friends as Obie) grew up in the city's North End. After graduating from St. Johns High School, he studied literature first at the University of Winnipeg and then at the University of Jerusalem. Oberman lived and travelled through Canada, Europe and the Middle East before he returned to Winnipeg in 1973, …
- Gcina Mhlope
Gcina Mhlope (b. 1959) is a well-known South African freedom fighter, activist, actor, storyteller, poet, playwright, director and author. Storytelling is a deeply traditional activity in Africa and Mhlope is one of the few woman storytellers in a country dominated by males. She does her most important work through charismatic performances, working to preserve storytelling as a means of keeping history alive and encouraging South African children to read.
- Mark Atkins
Mark Atkins is an Australian Aboriginal musician known for his skill on the didgeridoo, a traditional instrument. Mark Atkins is also a storyteller, songwriter, composer and painter. He descends from the Yamitji people of Western Australia. He was the 1990 winner of the Golden Didjeridu competition. He has worked with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Hothouse Flowers, Philip Glass, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.
- Archie Roach
Archie Roach (born 1956, Mooroopna, Victoria) is an Australian musician. A singer, songwriter and guitarist, he survived a turbulent upbringing to develop into a powerful voice for Indigenous Australia, a storyteller in the tradition of his ancestors, and a nationally popular and respected artist.
- Judy Blunt
Judy Blunt (born 1954) is an American writer from Montana. She was raised on a ranch in a remote area near Regina, Montana, south of Malta, Montana. Blunt received her M.F.A. from the University of Montana in 1994. She received a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship and a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Her essays and poems have appeared in such publications as "The New York Times", "Big Sky Journal" and "Oprah Magazine".
- Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is an Anishinaabe writer of mixed ancestry from the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She lives and works at Neyaashiinigmiing, Cape Croker Reserve on the Saugeen Peninsula in southwestern Ontario, and in Ottawa.
- Polly Frost
Polly Frost is a New York City-based writer, journalist, playwright, and storyteller specializing in humor and erotic horror. Frost's current work can be seen performed by various NYC-based actors at the Cornelia Street Cafe. During her early journalistic days, Frost had interviewed a variety of people, including Julia Child, Pauline Kael, and Winona Ryder.
- Agnes Walsh
Agnes Walsh is a Canadian actor, poet, playwright and storyteller from Newfoundland. Walsh was born in Placentia. Walsh has won Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters awards for poetry as well as TickleAce poetry and ballad writing awards. Her poems have been translated into French and Portuguese. She has toured Canada, the eastern United States, Portugal, and Ireland reading from her work.
- Birago Diop
Birago Ishmael Diop was a Senegalese poet and storyteller, active writer in the Négritude movement in the 1930s, as well as a veterinarian and diplomat.
- Edmund Lenihan
Edmund Lenihan is an Irish author and storyteller. He is one of the few practising Seanachies remaining in Ireland. He is a native of county Kerry but currently resides in Crusheen, co. Clare. He is an avid collector and documentor of folk tales, recording stories told by older people as passed to them in oral tradition. He has a particular interest in fairies as they relate to Irish folklore.
- Dan Levenson
Dan Levenson is an American old-time musician and storyteller. He sings and plays the five-string banjo, fiddle, and guitar, specializing in the music of Appalachia. A long-time member of the Boiled Buzzards string band, he has released several recordings and an instructional video for the clawhammer banjo. He has also written two instructional books on clawhammer banjo, and writes for "Banjo Newsletter".
- Will Wyatt
Will Wyatt (born January 7 1942) is a British is a media consultant and company director, formerly a journalist, television producer and senior executive at the BBC. His career began in 1964 as a trainee journalist on the "Sheffield Telegraph" newspaper, before moving to the BBC in 1965 as a sub-editor in BBC radio news. BBC radio. In 1968 he moved to BBC Television, working for the Presentation Department as producer of "Points of View", …
- Mohamed Mrabet
Mohammed Mrabet is a Moroccan storyteller who was born in Tangier in 1936. He is of Berber heritage whose family moved to Tangier from the Rif mountains. A fisherman and street kid for most of his life, he became a friend of Paul Bowles in 1960 when Bowles was impressed by his storytelling skills. Bowles became the translator of Mrabet's many prodigious oral tales told from a kif'd and utterly non-anglicized point of view.
- Tankred Dorst
Tankred Dorst is a German playwright and storyteller. Tankred Dorst currently lives and works in Munich. His farces, parables, one-act-plays and adaptations are inspired by the theatre of the absurd and the works of Ionesco, Giraudoux and Beckett. His monumental drama "Merlin oder das wüste Land", which was premiered in 1981 in Düsseldorf, has been compared to Goethe's "Faust". Some critics see it as the first major drama of the 1980s.
- Marcello Cividini
Italian pioneer in Direct Marketing, works at Corriere della Sera up to 1979. Fund raiser and database builder for many United Nations Agencies. Now founder and CEO of Coupon Line a company dedicated to revolutionary targeting technique in retail chains. Journalist and Teacher in Direct Marketing at Master in Brand Communication in Venice Ca' Foscari and Brand Marketing Strategy in Milano Politechnic University. China Partners is a new marketing venture to develop Italian food business in China.
- Lester Roloff
Lester Leo Roloff (June 28, 1914 - November 2, 1982) was an American fundamentalist Baptist preacher, storyteller, and author. Roloff is known for: *The youth homes he established for juvenile delinquents and the strict discipline practiced there, which many critics regard as child abuse. Roloff waged numerous battles with Texas state authorities over his disciplinary practices. *His advocacy of a strict all-natural diet and a rejection of processed foods, …
- Peggy Pettitt
Peggy Pettitt (born 1950), is an African American actress, dancer, teacher, playwright and storyteller. She is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. Pettitt's grandparents were a big, early influence, telling her memorable stories. As a child, Pettitt also observed various types of people who lived in her neighborhood. She valued greatly the sincere integrity of the working people who made up her community.
- Al Clouston
Alwyn Vey Clouston (1910 - October 27, 2004 in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada) was a Canadian storyteller and humourist known as "Uncle Al." He was popular at conventions during the time he worked as a travelling businessman. He retired in 1975 and became a best-selling author of comedy books. He recorded a Juno Award-nominated comedy album. He married Ida Bridden at St. John's Topsail Anglican Church on November 25, 1933, …
- Daniel Carlton
Daniel Carlton (b.1966) is an actor, writer, teaching artist, and professional storyteller. He is the author of the plays "The Eagle In Harlem And Other Stories", "The Dream Inn", "Timeless Journeys (Stories Of The Men Of Weeksville)", "Shelter - Refugees Of The American Dream", and many plays for young people. As a New York City-based storyteller, he recreates fairy tales and adapts them to modern settings.
- Jonathan James Cramer
Jonathan James Cramer is a storyteller, musician, arc welder, and author. He was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in the United States. He graduated from Hollis/Brookline High School, Hollis, New Hampshire, in 1993, and from the University of New Hampshire in Durham with a major in French in 1997. He received a Masters in English Literature from Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, in 1999. Cramer is the founder of the comedic music group The Tortured Geniuses.
- Tina McElroy Ansa
Tina McElroy Ansa is a novelist, publisher, filmmaker, teacher and journalist. But above all, she is a storyteller. She calls herself "part of a long and honored writing tradition, one of those little Southern girls who always knew she wanted to be a writer."
- Cecelia Condit
Cecelia Condit is an internationally renowned filmmaker whose work focuses on the contrast between the everyday world and the realm of fairytales. She considers herself a storyteller, often with a commentary on modern society; from topics such as female aging to the imaginary world of children. Condit describes her films saying: "My work centers around the theme of how bizarre events disrupt mundane lives.
- Solomon Cleaver
Solomon Cleaver was a Winnipeg minister and storyteller best known for his adaptation of Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables", published in 1935 as "Jean Val Jean". Cleaver was a well-known orator; and actor Raymond Massey is said to have practiced Cleaver's sermons as a child. Solomon Cleaver's remaining relatives are his great grandsons John Cleaver Barnes and Douglas James Edgar Barnes.
- Julian Branston
Julian Branston is a novelist and poet whose debut novel, 2003's "The Eternal Quest" (U.S. title: "Tilting at Windmills"), is a fictionalized accounting Miguel de Cervantes's efforts to complete the first book of the novel Don Quixote. Branston was born on a sugar cane plantation in South America, and started writing poetry as a teenager, reading on local radio and TV. In 1976 a book, "Storyteller", containing his poems, was published.
- Rikki Arundel
Rikki Arundel Founder and First President of the Professional Speakers Association, Rikki Arundel is a truly unique International Keynote Speaker, a master communicator and entertainer with a unique ability to transition the gender divide.