Storytellers

2027 Featured Tellers

Bil Lepp

Bil Lepp is a nationally touring storyteller, humorist, and comedian, earning the appreciation of listeners from all walks of life. Though he is a five-time champion of the West Virginia Liars Contest, his work often contains pieces of truth, presenting universal themes in clever ways. Lepp has created over 20 audio collections, is an award-winning children’s author, and is a contributing columnist for West Virginia’s biggest newspaper. Lepp is a recipient of the NSN ORACLE Circle of Excellence award, the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, the PEN/Steven Kroll award, and the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folk honor.

JOSH GOFORTH

From his Appalachian Mountain accent to his incredible talents on pretty much all the instruments, Josh Goforth is one of those storytellers you really need to hear in order to believe. With stories filled with the most original characters alive (he swears they all exist) and songs that will have you clapping and singing along, you can’t help being enchanted and transported to his boyhood upbringing in the Appalachian Mountains.

Sheila Arnold

Sheila Arnold has a talent for storytelling, a passion for history, and compassion for people. She storytells and dresses as historic characters, provides christian monologues, and has done professional development for schools, festivals, churches, and organizations nationally and internationally. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Artists Standing Strong Together (ASST) a source of inspiration, strength and action in the storytelling and artists’ world. In the past she has worked as a Drama Ministry Director; Colonial Williamsburg employee; Substitute Teacher; and Social Worker for aggressive teens with emotional problems. She lives in Hampton, Virginia.

Charlotte Blake Alston

For more than 30 years, Charlotte Blake Alston has brought traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral traditions to stages across North America and abroad, often accompanying herself on djembe, mbira, or the 21-stringed kora. A former elementary school teacher, she has performed everywhere from the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian to schools, day care centers, prisons, and youth detention centers. She is the Philadelphia Orchestra’s official Storyteller, Narrator and Host, and a recipient of the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the NSN Circle of Excellence Award, and the Zora Neale Hurston Award, the highest honor of the National Association of Black Storytellers.

Pippa White

Pippa White calls her One’s Company productions “part theatre, part storytelling, part history.” Audiences call them unique, captivating, and touching. She has crisscrossed the country many times over, touring to more than 30 states and performing at universities, museums, libraries, performing arts centers, and festivals, including three appearances at the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York City, where a reviewer called her work “riveting, heartbreaking and suspenseful.” Pippa turned to solo performing after an extensive career in West Coast theatre and television, and has been a teaching artist with the Nebraska Arts Council since 1990.

Michael Reno Harrell

Michael Reno Harrell is an award-winning songwriter as well as a veteran storyteller and entertainer, and he is from the South — the Southern Appalachian Mountains, to put a finer point on it. His original songs and stories have been described as “Appalachian grit and wit,” though years of touring the British Isles, Europe, and most of the United States have given his writing a reach well beyond his boyhood home. Harrell’s recordings top the Americana Music Association charts year after year, and he has been a Featured Teller at the National Storytelling Festival and Teller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center.