Our 2024 Headliners Line-Up

Tom Juniper

Tom is the winner of the 2024 Step-Up Commission and is a performance poet based in Sheffield.

Tom’s work often focuses on the experience of being other, whether that’s talking about being autistic or being part of the queer community, or about the Other as in strange and mysterious creatures from folklore traditions.

See more about Tom

Shonaleigh

Not only is Shonaleigh is one of Europe’s leading storytellers, she runs House of the West Wind College of Storytellingb bringer of the Step-Up Commission.
Having learned the Drut’syla tradition from the age of four, she carries thousands of oral stories from the Jewish tradition and shares their magic, mystery and wisdom with audiences around the world.

See more about Shonaleigh

Jimmy Williamson

Jimmy Williamson, son of Duncan, is a member of the Scottish traveller community. He tells stories of the traveller people passed down through generations of the traveller community. These stories are purely oral having never been written down.
Jimmy is also a singer and songwriter, singing songs which cover a whole spectrum of subjects.

Zahra Afsah

Zahra was born and raised in Tehran. She studied Art and Archaeology at SOAS and in 2016 completed her second MA in Persian Painting and Transcultural Visuality at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her MA dissertation examines the links between oral storytelling and Persian miniature painting, exploring the direct influences of the oral tradition in the Khamseh of Nizami of 1494-95.

For more, click on Zahra

John Row

John Row is a storyteller and poet, curator of the World Storytelling Cafe and director of the 2022 Marrakech International Storytelling Festival with half a century behind him of spoken word both poems and stories.
John has told stories over the whole world and is a familiar figure at festivals across England. He runs storytelling areas on Glastonbury Festival Kidz Field and at Cambridge Folk Festival.

John is also one of the East Anglian Storytelling Festival tellers.

Find out more about John’s work at the World Storytelling Cafe on worldstorytellingcafe.com.

Despina Ariou

Despina was born and bred in the little island of Syros, Greece, where -after travelling Greece and Europe- she now lives. Despina teaches English and Spanish as second languages. Growing up listening to tales from her granny, she believes stories are a very useful tool for educational purposes and also for trying to make the world a better place by creating strong community bonds and the comforting feeling of sharing.

For more, click on Despina

Simon Fletcher

Healing Nature
Simon will be running poetry writing workshops on ‘healing nature’, how nature heals us and how we can try to heal nature.
Workshoppers will be encouraged to share and write about their experiences of the benefits of nature and how we might all do more to benefit nature.

Simon is a well-known poet and freelance writer who organises live literature events, runs workshops and manages Offa’s Press, a small poetry press in Shropshire.
Simon has organised hundreds of live literature events and creative writing workshops in the West

For more, click on Simon

Amelia Armande

Amelia “Ace” Armande is magical, sparky, and probably several goblins in a long coat. They make work about fairytales, death, and how the stories we tell shape us. They have toured nationally as an actor and internationally as a storyteller. Their plays and poems have won awards, and they are a talented artist and graphic designer with a flair for colourful and quirky designs. Amelia is non-binary and asexual, and proud to represent the LGBTQIA+ community.

For More, click on Shonaleigh

Simon Heywood

Simon Heywood has published poetry, translations fiction and non-fiction, and worked to international acclaim as a storyteller, musician, composer, and workshop leader, performing in pubs, clubs, cafes, festivals, parks, schools, libraries, village halls, cemeteries, theatres, arts centres, forests, living rooms, hospital wards, narrowboats, roundhouses and castles.

He completed a PhD on contemporary storytelling at Sheffield University’s National Centre for English Cultural Tradition in 2001 and has lectured in creative writing at Derby University since 1996.

For more, click on Simon

Trigger Bliss

TriggerBliss fuses spoken word with other art forms to inspire healing, conscious thought, and authentic expression. She is the founder and director of Trigger Your Bliss CIC, building resilience to life’s resistance through creativity and coaching. TriggerBliss facilitates accessible and inclusive intergenerational creative well-being activities that support the mental and emotional well-being of the wider community. Follow TriggerBliss on socials @triggeryourbliss.

See TriggerBliss on Instagram Trigger

Simone Gilliat

Simone Gilliatt, Multi faceted performance artist, healer and Creative director of GAWIE and Matthew Trustman Drama therapist, storyteller and all round good guy, will be facilitating a fun 🎉 inclusive workshop on Saturday to get you playing with improvisation through words, movement and props. We aim to support you in finding ways to share creative expressions with confidence and ease. The workshop is open to everyone and will be accessible and silly. We look forward to seeing you there.

Simone will also be co-hosting with Jonathon Day on Friday from 7:30 an open improv multi-genre session in the Priory Hall – come and join us!

Dan
Sedgewick

Dan Sedgwick is a storyteller from Ipswich, Suffolk. He spent 13 years teaching and used storytelling to engage, inspire and connect children. In 2022 he set up the non-profit organisation Chapter 82, running projects with children and adults in Suffolk.

He has told stories in nurseries, schools, festivals, libraries and recovery groups to people of all ages. Dan believes stories go right to the core of what it means to be a human and tries to share stories in places they wouldn’t otherwise be. He sees stories as a way of connecting people to one another and the world, geographically, historically and spiritually.

Marion
Leeper

Based in Cambridge, Marion and her amazing story mat are familiar visitors to museums, schools and libraries around the region. She has toured her shows for grownups to clubs and festivals around the country and internationally. She tells stories for children of all ages, and specialises in multi-sensory storytelling for the very young and for people with learning difficulties.

She writes on education and storytelling for the magazine Early Years Educator and for PPS books.

She is a long time member of the local group Cambridge Storytellers, and is currently involved in organising the East Anglian Storytelling Festival.

Jonathon Day

Jonathon, international musician, will be leading music events and open sessions.

Of himself, Jonathon says “I like the quiet, the animals and the trees. I grew up in between factories, steel hard and iron grey. Long ago most of my family lived in these borderlands; I guess I’ve always been slowly heading home. It’s not only the things, temporary and fleeting as we all are, frantic half seen ghosts to the oldest of trees. It’s the intuitions which shimmer and call in the buzzard’s mewl or the fox’s flash. I try to hold this sparkling stuff long enough to sing it and remember, before it trickles through my fingers back into the earth.”