Storytelling at the Eden Project I was thrilled to be commissioned to write three short stories for Eden Project Storytellers to perform throughout their summer of Celebration across the site. I offered a selection of stories from Africa and the Caribbean islands and they chose three of my favourites. I was later invited to visit […]
When I began researching and writing stories for my new book of Caribbean Folktales, one of the first things I did was to speak with my fellow Storytellers about their favourite stories from these islands. Pippa Reid who is the London representative for the Society of Storytelling offered to put me in touch with Trinidadian […]
I have often said that I intend to write a collection of African and Caribbean stories for children. My dream was to share some of my favourite stories with the next generation of readers, writers, and storytellers. You can imagine my delight when children’s publisher ‘Scholastic’ asked me to write a collection of African and […]
In my first book of Caribbean Folktales to be published by The History Press , I’m writing about a variety of characters who feature commonly in Caribbean folklore. Some of them are supernatural figures who may be considered vengeful spirits or spirits who protect elements of the earth. Others are tricksters in animal form who […]
When I began thinking of ideas for my new book of ‘Caribbean folktales’ I knew that gathering the stories would unravel many more stories and memories. Part of my research entails speaking to people from the Caribbean islands. I know quite a few Caribbean folktales that I often tell when Storytelling but for my book, […]
‘As dawn kissed the sky, she looked out of her window and saw a ball of flames darting through the tamarind trees. The shape-shifting Soucouyant had found her victim.’ I’m very excited to announce that I’m writing a new book – a collection of Caribbean Folktales which will be published by The History Press. These […]
On the hottest day of the year, I was invited to read one of my short stories for a Haringey Literature Live event. The themes were very aptly named ‘midsummer mayhem, heat and summer madness’. Fiction writer Jayne Joso opened up the evening reading an extract from her new novel ‘My Falling Down House’ set in Tokyo. Poet […]
I love re-telling and collecting stories, yet I’ve not made much time to write my own story until now. I recently attended a short writing course run by Haringey Literature Live. It was a ‘Life Writing in Fiction’ course, led by short story writer Rebecca Swirsky. There were just 3 of us attending the course, all with […]
Everyone is a storyteller – we tell stories everyday to each other from ‘what happened on the way to work’ to ‘family memories’. We tell each other stories to share information, relate and inspire on may levels. Whilst researching Anancy trickster stories to re-tell to children, I also decided to collect stories from around […]
Today, my storytelling workshop in Gouda, has us looking at the structure of the standard folk tale. This gets me thinking more about the sequences for Anancy spiderman stories that I plan to retell. Peter Fruhmann explains to us how with traditional folk tales you have: Context – where the characters and setting is explained Turning […]
