Featured Storytellers

Bil Lepp

Featured Storyteller

Bil Lepp is an award-winning storyteller, author, and recording artist. He’s also the host of the History Channel’s Man Vs History series, and a contributing columnist to the West Virginia Gazette-Mail. Growing up in a family where the truth was fluid, Bil Lepp became adept at spinning tales and exaggerating circumstances at an early age.

A nationally renowned storyteller and five time champion of the West Virginia Liars’ Contest, Bil’s outrageous, humorous tall-tales and witty stories have earned the appreciation of listeners of all ages and from all walks of life. Though a champion liar, his stories often contain morsels of truth which shed light on universal themes. Be it a hunting trip, a funeral, or a visit to the dentist, Bil can find the humor in any situation. Lepp explains that while his stories may not be completely true, they are always honest.

“…Lepp, a cross between Dr. Seuss and…film noir....” -Charleston Gazette

Bil is the author of seven books and twenty-one audio collections. His first children’s book, The King of Little Things, won the PEN Steven Kroll Award for Picture Book Writing, received a Kirkus Starred review, and favorable reviews from The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, The School Library Journal and other publications. It also won the Zena Sutherland Award, the Parent’s Choice Gold Award, was a finalist for the Irma Black Award, and was chosen to be West Virginia's book at the National Book Festival. Bil’s humorous, family friendly tall-tales and stories have earned the appreciation of listeners of all ages and from all walks of life. Though a five time champion of the WV Liars’s Contest, Lepp’s stories often contain morsels of truth which present universal themes in clever and witty ways.

A storyteller, author, and recording artist, Lepp’s works have received awards and recognition from The Parents’ Choice Foundation, The National Parenting Publications Assoc., and the Public Library Assoc. In 2011, Bil was awarded the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence Award. Lepp has been featured 19 times at the National Storytelling Festival, and performed at major storytelling festivals around the county, at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and at corporate events and functions. Lepp has been featured on, and hosted NPR’s internationally syndicated Mountain Stage. He is also the recipient of the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folk honor. Bil lives in South Charleston, WV with his wife and two children.

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April Armstrong

Featured Storyteller

Award winning storyteller April Armstrong weaves melodies and words for a refreshing and compelling style of storytelling. Her story programs are fun and interactive. She tells stories for schools, colleges, libraries, museums and festivals. She tells multi-cultural folktales, including African-American and Latino stories. April's stories delight, inform and inspire audiences of all ages.

April has performed at the Exchange Place at the 2023 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN. She has been a featured teller at the National Association of Black Storytellers’ (NABS) Conference, The National Storytelling Network Conference, The Logan Center/University of Chicago, The Grapevine, Speak Story (WV), Beaver Tales Storytelling Festival (PA), Connecticut Storytelling Festival, Hudson River Clearwater, The Mohegan Storytelling and Rockland County Storytelling Festivals; Rowayton’s Tellabration and the Story Space as well as, the Negril Elementary School in Jamaica and in Bali, Indonesia at the Pelangi International School.

April is the recipient of the National Storytellers Networks 2020 J.J. Reneaux Emerging Artist Award for Storytelling as well as the 2015 Bronx BRIO Award for Storytelling. Her cd has won a Parents Choice Award - Silver.

"Stories are for everyone. A satisfying story gives you something to chew on, think about. They can make you giggle, make you shiver, make you cry, make you fall in love, make you want to holler and go a marchin'. And when they're good you want to hear them again and again. Some stories can resonate so deeply. Even when they are translated into different languages, they still make us smile or weep. Those are the stories I love, being able to find that common thread for each of us to share. Making connections is why I love telling stories."
- April Armstrong

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Tim Lowry

Featured Storyteller

The course of Tim’s life was pretty much set at six years of age when his parents took him to see Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Ever since that glittering introduction to show business, Tim’s life has been a series of colorful acts, featuring a wide variety of stories that include personal narratives, historical stories, folk tales, poems, literary classics, the occasional ghost legend, and a few Bible stories.

When he was eight years old, Tim was cast as Ebenezer Scrooge in a second-grade production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. This classic has proven to be the most enduring of all the stories in Tim’s repertoire. To date, he has performed his one-man version of A Christmas Carol nearly 200 times in venues from South Carolina to Alaska. In 2023 he published a book, Haunted By Dickens, about his love for the world’s most popular ghost story. Audiences consistently return year after year to see the show and happily participate in Tim’s annual holiday fundraisers, donating more than $30,000 to orphan relief, hurricane help, cancer treatment, food banks, grief support, prisoner’s children, military families, literacy programs, and several other worthy causes.

As a young teenager Tim produced puppet shows for children’s birthday parties. His fee was $20 per show, but he offered a $5 discount if you could give him a ride because he was not yet old enough to drive. The puppets have long since retired, but Tim continues to travel across the country performing in over fifty storytelling festivals and special events. His work is regularly featured at the International Storytelling Center and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Due to inflation his current fee is considerably more than $20, but he will still offer a discount if you can give him a ride.

As an award-winning high school drama student Tim toured the East Coast, traveling to a dozen states with a musical show celebrating the 200th anniversary of the United States Constitution. This experience gave him a great appreciation for American history and culture. He continues to tell stories of America’s past to America’s future in elementary schools across the country. He is currently working on a children’s book about a gentleman who got his pants blown off during the Revolutionary War. Tim hopes that a well-placed cannon shot and children’s fascination with underwear will combine to produce a bestseller just in time for the 250th anniversary of American Independence.

After earning a degree in Speech Education with an emphasis in Theater, Tim taught in both elementary and secondary classrooms. He also volunteered as a teacher of English to Russian immigrants. His teaching methods were described as “unorthodox and disruptive.” After refereeing a wrestling match that may or may not have involved fifth graders and a former resident of the Soviet Union, Tim left the classroom in 2000 to pursue a career as a professional storyteller. He recently published a book about his first 25 years as a traveling raconteur. The title of his memoir came from an audience member who described his storytelling style by saying, “Tim Lowry might share a personal story, a historical anecdote, maybe something about a rabbit, or he might play the kazoo. You never know what’s going to pop out of that clown car next. He is a Southern Fried Circus!”

Between storytelling gigs and writing, Tim enjoys spending time in his hometown of Summerville, South Carolina with his wife and two daughters, tending to his porch plants, and reading from the Old Farmer’s Almanac while sipping from an ice cold glass of sweet tea.

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Sam Payne

Featured Storyteller

With a guitar in hand, Payne tells stories of life, of people, of history and heritage.

It's not exactly how he started out. "I was going to be a big pop act; that was my first band. Then I added jazz." But what he has come to realize, he says, is "that what I am is an American folk singer. I connect to that part of the community." And as a folk singer, "I feel a responsibility to the community I belong to, to provide a picture frame for our cultural family. I have found that I can be a voice for the Western pioneer experience."

Let's talk about connections: Not only has Payne discovered "how family, faith and ancestors connect us to each other" and reinforces those connections through his music, he is also honoring the connections in his own life. "My dad, Marvin, was a folk singer who made a living walking door to door with a guitar on his back with albums to sell. He was the stereotypical 'artist as the servant of the kingdom.' Being a folk musician cost my dad a lot. But he had deep spiritual ideas that he was doing what he came here to do. To say there were times when we lived in abject poverty is too strong — but not too strong."

Let's talk about passion: Because Payne grew up watching how hard his dad worked to make a living, and because his dad knew how hard it would be, "he didn't encourage us to follow musical pursuits. I actually trained as a schoolteacher, and worked at that for 11 years."

It wasn't until "music kept knocking on the door and couldn't be ignored that I turned to it." Payne still writes books for elementary-school kids, has done some science and social studies texts as well as some historical fiction. But he's also let music into his life because he had to; the passion was there.

Storytelling, connections and passion all come together in Payne's latest CD, "Father to Son."

It features both the stories and the songs that have been popular in his live shows, he says. "It's the album that people have been coming up after the shows and asking for." The CD contains 24 tracks, "and when people first see it they think, 'Wow, that's a lot of music.' But 11 tracks are stories; 13 tracks are songs."

He's found that "my live show depends on the stories behind the songs," so he hopes the CD conveys the spirit and feel of the live show. "It was a great pleasure to make," he says.

As he has said, Payne came rather late to music. "I was living in St. George, when my youngest brother came through. He's an innovative jazz guitarist, and he handed me a guitar. 'Everyone else in the family knows how to play,' he said. 'We're tired of you not playing.' I had done some singing with groups before that, but I decided I'd better learn the guitar."

And once he did that, "I reconciled myself to the fact that I'm a folk singer. That's a dirty word to pop musicians," he jokes. But he was so drawn to "the stories of this place. They are what make us what we are. I have an opportunity to tell those stories. To be able to tell them effectively is the gift, and it is a gift," he says.

And now, yes, "one job is to put food on the table. But I've also learned that if the audience walked away, I would still have to make the music. I would still have to write, learn and perform songs."

And while he is grateful that audiences have stayed with him, he also hopes that he has given something to them.

His mother used to say that "folk singers are the medicine men of the community. They can heal, they can inspire more than just entertain. There's something spiritually enriching in what a folk singer does."

He doesn't write to teach exactly, he says, but songwriting is the way he "works out my life. It's the way I come to know God, family, community and our responsibilities as human beings. All that gets worked out in my mind through songs."

Plus, he says, he can't "discount the sheer fun of it. It's such a great pleasure to play with such great musicians as I do."

And he is conscious of his heritage. "My dad was billed as the 'Mormon Troubadour.' He was born of the pool of musicians that gave us the likes of the Kingston Trio and Bob Dylan."

His dad was a groundbreaker in many ways. "Back in those days, there was no LDS music industry. It overstates it to say he created the industry, but he and his contemporaries certainly had a hand in it."

Payne is one of five siblings "who all do this, in spite of our parents' best intentions. We will never stop being influenced by where we came from."

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