The Stories Continue!!!!
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Dates are set!!!
Hampton Storytelling Festival
July 17-20, 2025
All Events in Hampton, VA
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All continued efforts require more...more hands and more minds. Please reach out to Janice Johnson at Janice.JohnsonVA@gmail.com. to explore ways you can help
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Please join us in supporting the Festival!
Or use this QR code for donations
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Andy Offutt Irwin
With a manic, Silly Putty voice, astonishing mouth noises, and heart-filled stories, Andy Offutt Irwin is equal parts mischievous schoolboy and the Marx Brothers, peppered with a touch of the Southern balladeer. He has been a Featured Teller at the National Storytelling Festival eleven times and is a perennial favorite at the International Storytelling Center’s Teller-in-Residence Series.
A storyteller, theatre director, singer-songwriter, and Shakespearean actor, Andy was Artist-in-Residence at Emory University’s Oxford College from 1991 to 2007. He has performed at LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in New York, The Library of Congress, Walt Disney World, and a whole mess of theatres, colleges, and festivals all over the United States
Andy lives in Covington, Georgia. He thinks he is funny.
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Janice "Jay" Johnson
Janice “Jay” Johnson spent most of her professional life working in youth
development organizations. She is a newly minted storyteller whose only regret is that she didn’t start doing this earlier. Jay lives in Newport News, VA.
Via Goode
Via Goode is an award-winning storyteller, motivational speaker, and workshop facilitator. Headlining in more than 1,200 performances since she began sharing stories professionally almost 15 years ago, Via has been delighting audiences in public and private schools, as well as the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Hampton History Museum, the Children's Museum of Virginia, and dozens of libraries and parks throughout Hampton Roads.
Via has been a roster artist with Arts for Learning, the Virginia Affiliate of Young Audiences of Virginia since 2012, and was named their Teaching Artist of the year in 2015. In 2019, she was a keynote speaker at the “Inspiring Teachers” Conference they held in partnership with Old Dominion University’s Darden College of Education & Professional Studies. In 2022, Via completed the Responsive Arts in School Education (RAISE) training program, which focuses on using the arts in healing-centered, culturally responsive practices rooted in social emotional learning. And in the summer of 2023, Via was selected by Arts for Learning to attend the Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts to become a Wolf Trap-trained teaching artist.
Prior to beginning her storytelling and public speaking career, Via was a preschool teacher, as well as a substitute teacher for K-12th grade for Chesapeake Public Schools. She also served as the assistant director of Children’s Ministry for a large church for 13 years, providing care and instruction, as well as teacher training for educators of preschool through 5th grade. She saw first-hand how storytelling was not only a great means of teaching early literacy and pre-literacy skills, but engaging the children with stories was one of the best ways to make the hours in each school day fly by ;)
Via is a member of the Virginia Storytelling Alliance (VASA), Northeast Storytelling (NEST), and the National Storytelling Network, as well as NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), VAAEYC (Virginia Association for the Education of Young Children), and SECOVA (Southeastern Chapter of VAAEYC). She is also a member of RAPS (River & Prairie Storyweavers), and was honored to win their Deb Wallen Memorial Story Slam in 2022.
Dylan Pritchett
Newport News, VA
Since 1990, Dylan (pronounced Die-lan) has been a full-time storyteller and currently resides in Newport News, Virginia. Dylan shared a 13-year relationship as one of a handful of teaching artists in the John F. Kennedy Center’s “Partners in Education” National Touring Program. Dylan was the 10 th President of The National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc. and presently serves as their Festival Director. He’s the author of two children’s picture book entitled “The First Music” and “The Yellow Speckled Black Bird”. Books The First Music & The Yellow Speckled Blackbird...purchased on Amazon or August House (FM) E)
arts4learningva.org/artist/dylan-pritchett/
Ray Christian
Ray is a combat-decorated retired Army paratrooper. He has an MA in Public History and an EdS and Doctorate in Education Leadership. He is a Fulbright Specialist Expert in Education and Storytelling Narrative (The only Specialist in this field in the country) and was recently awarded the inaugural Black Appalachian Storytelling Fellowship for North Carolina. A former adjunct professor of history and storytelling at several universities, Ray has performed at numerous storytelling festivals and stages across the US and Canada including Old North State and The National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, NC (Slam winner and featured teller). His stories have appeared in Reader’s Digest (2016 Best Stories in America and 2017 American Heroes) and the New York Times bestselling book “How to Tell a Story, “Edited by directors from The Moth. As a competitive storyteller, Ray is a 12-time Moth Story Slam Champion and winner of the 2016 National Storytelling Festival Story Slam. His stories have been featured on radio shows produced by The Moth, Snap Judgment (Toured with the Live shows of Both Snap Judgment and the Moth) and Back Story as well as an array of podcasts including Spooked, Story Collider, AdultISH, The Confessional and Risk. Ray travels to Asheville, NC to host the monthly Moth Story Slam, but resides in the remote mountains of Watauga County, NC. From his mountain oasis, he produces and hosts his own podcast, from PRX with support from the Moth What’s Ray Saying? a show that uses history and story to explore the Black American experience from the unique perspective of the many worlds Ray inhabits.
Valerie Davis
A gifted actor, storyteller, playwright, and producer, Valerie Davis uses her talents to promote awareness of lesser-known historical events and people. With an extensive background in independent films and stage productions, Valerie is known for her historical interpretations of women of courage, channeling her theater background to bring characters such as Coretta Scott King, Harriet Tubman, and Martha Ann Fields to life.
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Sarah Brady
Sarah Brady is an actress, storyteller, teaching artist, and writer whose backgrounds in theatre and education influence her storytelling. She taught communication and theatre at multiple universities before making her way toward solo performance and then into the storytelling world. She has told stories in the US and UK, where she lived for three years soaking in stories as her roots grew deep in British soil. Sarah's telling spans genres of historical, traditional, literary, and personal tales, while her awards include being chosen the Sunburst Performing Artist of the year by Arts for Learning Virginia; being selected as best liar of the Cambridge Storytellers Liars Contest; and being part of a team that received a Pete Taylor Partnership of Excellence Award from the Military Child Education Coalition for work with the DODEA Lakenheath Complex Schools and Suffolk County Councils Archives that culminated in an exhibition telling the stories of third-culture kids living in Suffolk, England, "'I have three homes': Life as an American military child in Suffolk.'" She has told at a variety of festivals, including appearing at the 50th Annual National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, as a New Voice Featured Teller, and has worked with such entities as Story Tapestries; Arts for Learning--Virginia; Cambridge Storytellers; Epic Tales; the Suffolk Archives; the White Rose Project at Oxford University; the International Storytelling Center; Young Audiences New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania; Armed Services Arts Partnership; and McCarter Theatre Center. Passionate about stories that help us see each other and the world around us, Sarah specializes in finding the heart of each story she tells.
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