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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Charlotte Blake Alston

For over 30 years, Charlotte Blake Alston has graced stages in venues throughout North America and abroad. Venues are wide and include the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Symphony Orchestra Narrations and at regional, national and international Storytelling Festivals. She is a frequent guest artist in universities, grade schools, museums and cultural arts institutions around the country but this former elementary school teacher also presents in Day Care Centers, for Special Needs populations as well as prisons and youth detention centers.

Charlotte breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and cultural traditions.

Her storytelling skills were honed in childhood when her father introduced her to the work of African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her solo performances are often enhanced with traditional instruments such as djembe, mbira, or the 21-stringed kora. In 1999, Charlotte began studying the kora and the West African history-telling traditions of Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Her teacher was the highly respected Senegalese griot (jali), the late Djimo Kouyate. She later resumed her studies with Malian Virtuoso Yacouba Sissoko. Her story-telling repertoire is varied and programs are adapted to any grade level or age group.

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Dovie Thomason

Dovie Thomason imagines herself as a river, fed by many streams: Lakota, Apache, and Scot Traveller ancestry, urban Chicago, rural Texas and international travels, the Internet and Indigenous elders, family teachings, kitchen table wisdom, and university classrooms — and draws on those contrasts and cultures in her work. Conveying these stories respectfully and responsibly is Thomason’s calling and has made her one of the most respected and admired storytellers of her generation.  When she adds personal stories and untold histories, the result is a contemporary narrative of Indigenous history and identity in North America told provocatively with elegance, wit, and passion.
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She has been featured at countless prominent global events, including the Kennedy Center, National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and festivals from Tennessee to Estonia, New Zealand to New Mexico. She has shared storytelling as an Artist-in-Education on many state rosters for over thirty years.  She is a recipient of the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence award and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers’ Traditional Storyteller Award.

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Michael Reno Harrell

Michael Reno Harrell is an award winning songwriter, a published author, a nationally known storyteller and a visual artist. And he’s from the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina where all those things are as much a part of life as breathing. Michael’s talents in the aforementioned Fields have taken him to forty-four states and several foreign countries over his over Fifty plus year career. His work is based in life experiences that reflect the culture of his mountain roots, which go back eight generations. But, Michael’s stories, songs and artworks reflect not only the southern experience, but also American’s story. His work, in whichever form it may take, all comes down to one thing...story.


One could compare Michael's performances to his granddaddy's pocket knife: well worn and familiar feeling, but razor sharp and with a point. His brand of entertainment appeals to a very diverse audience.

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