Our storytellers cover a range of topics and are highly experienced performers. We can provide engaging storytellers to entertain your audience at any size event. Please contact us to find out more.
Principal of Steel City Storytellers, LLC
By day, Robert Angelo Creo is an attorney, arbitrator, mediator, and educator. By night, he is a storyteller extraordinaire and the creator and principal of Steel City Storytellers, LLC. Robert, better known as ANGELO, often tells stories about his own life experiences– the wacky, the weird, and the wonderful. He started Steel City Storytellers to give storytellers in the Pittsburgh region a platform to share stories with wider audiences. Email Angelo at racreo@gmail.com to book him or another storyteller for your event, to collaborate on a project, or to co-host an event with Steel City Storytellers.
Writer
A storyteller from an early age, staci b’s artistic journey began in earnest when she left the corporate world in 1998 to become a writer. Her love of telling tales spans novels, short stories, creative non-fiction, poetry and plays, as well as performing as a storyteller and stand-up comedian. The author of seven books, Staci’s been published in print and on web sites around the world and shared her stories on both cyber and real-world stages. Connect with her on Instagram @heyitsmestacib.
Edward Bates
Edward Bates is a Pittsburgh-based writer, actor and story teller who has appeared on stage in a variety of roles, including Othello in Shakespeare’s Othello and on film as Red in The Shawshank Redemption and Chief Bromden in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Watch for his short story series YouTube channel coming this fall and his book, Tin Man, based on a true Pittsburgh due out in 2023.
Job Bedford
Job Bedford is a Lead Robotics System Engineer on Lawrenceville’s Robotics Row and has worked for NASA, Walt Disney Imagineering, Carnegie Mellon University, & Ready Robotics. He is full of outlandish tales of inventions gone awry and the misadventures of his technological journeys. After years of telling campfire stories and intrepid dinner tales, he is eager to captivate audiences with unique and gripping stories from his life as a roboticist, break-dancer, and skater-of-the-streets. Married to his wife in Baltimore, he travels the Pennsylvania Turnpike more times than anyone would admit. And yes, it’s ‘Job’ like Job in the Bible.
Joel Brady
Joel Brady is on faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in the Departments of Religious Studies and Slavic Languages and Literatures. His courses include Vampire: Blood and Empire, Madness and Madmen in Russian Culture, and the History of Orthodox Christianity. He has competed on Ninja Warrior as “The Vampire Professor” and still can’t believe that making it to the Las Vegas Finals didn’t get him tenure. Since they met in junior high, his wife Peg has given him inspiration for most of his story ideas, and oh yea, their four children. His other passions include the banjo and rock climbing.
D. Scott Burke
The myths of Irish bards have always inspired and intrigued Scott Burke. From the time he was a boy, his mother told him he had his father’s gift of sales, but it took years to realize it is a passion for storytelling that drives his love of connecting with people. After diverse career paths and leading multiple lives, he embraces his creativity by writing. Through vision quest work with The School of Lost Borders, Scott found purpose in having deep and meaningful conversations with total strangers. He is working on his first novel.
Mylene Chan
Mylene Chan is a native of Hong Kong who is spending 2022 in Pittsburgh as the Founders’ Fellow of Mediators Beyond Borders shadowing Angelo Creo in his work as a mediator and arbitrator. She is a graduate of George Washington University School of Law, Yale University, and Julliard School where she was educated as a classical pianist.
Stephen Cooper
Stephen Cooper is a Clinical Nurse Educator and part-time Jedi Knight. His attention deficit career path has included stints as a forest firefighter, PE teacher, community educator, and wilderness instructor. A past Moth GrandSLAM participant, he was also selected as a storyteller for the Green Building Alliance’s Inspired Speaker Series and the Bricolage Production Company’s WordPlay. A proud father of three, his greatest achievement is acquiring low paying but super cool sounding job titles
Barbara Griffin
Barbara Griffin is an attorney and director of a free legal aid program that helps people with very low incomes. She’s back home in Pittsburgh after living many years in Washington D.C. and Austin, Texas, and recently became an empty nester when the youngest of her three children went off to college. When not fighting for the underdog, Barbara enjoys hiking, scrapbooking, and watching college basketball.
Jus Janell
Jus Janell has been performing stand-up comedy since 2017. She opened her own comedy club in Swissvale called the Giggles & Grub Club – the Only Pop-Up Comedy club in Pittsburgh! She has traveled to other cities to perform stand up, including New York and Detroit. Janell loves to perform magic and has her line of eyewear called Jus Shades. She’s married with two adult children and two very precious granddaughters!
Tyler Ray Kendrick
Tyler Ray Kendrick is a stand-up comic and performer and a fighter for human rights. Mr. Tall, dark and grandson himself. He’s a lover and a fighter. A lover and fighter for human rights. Just a Gen Xer trapped in a Millennial’s body.
Robert Kreashko
Robert Kreashko has retired from his orthodontic practice and now works as an orthodontic consultant for Smile Direct Club. His play “Camp Life”, was produced by the New Kensington Civic Theatre in 2008. He enjoys writing song lyrics and poetry, sports, and outdoor activities. It was from the elders at hunting and fishing camps where he learned the fine art of storytelling.
Alan Lantzy
Alan Lantzy was born in a small Appalachian coal mining town during the Truman administration. Now a retired pediatrician and neonatologist, he has been in Pittsburgh for more than 50 years. He volunteers at Meals on Wheels and The March of Dimes.
Pamela Latta
Pamela Latta is a bon vivant, raconteur and stand-up comedienne, who has appeared on the Risk Show with Kevin Allison and the Moth Radio hour on NPR. She has taken the stage at a variety of venues, including the Old Arcade Theater in Pittsburgh and Machete’s Club and Theater in Panama City, Panama. Other performances of note include stand-up gigs at the St. Mark’s Club and Stand Up NYC, both in Manhattan. Her real-world job is as an Ordinary Seaman with the United States of America Merchant Marines and her greatest passion is being a boat captain and delivering yachts through the Panama Canal and throughout the world.
Peggy McGarry
Peggy McGarry hails from a big Irish family in Buffalo NY. She landed in Pittsburgh in the 90s via San Francisco where she became co-founder of a software-based strategic planning company. An adjunct professor for Carlow University’s MBA program for 13 years, she currently works for WestPenn/Cal U’s Global Online. Her greatest joys are her four grandies, three greatgrandies, Irish Ceili dancing, Swing dancing, Kayaking, lectures, cultural events and her latest adventure into storytelling.
Krish Mohan
Described as “dangerously perceptive”, Radical Indian Stand Up Comedian Krish Mohan uses intelligent humor and sharp wit to take on issues like immigration, war, religion, race and various other hot button issues! Using historic anecdotes and storytelling Krish captivates audiences, while adding an optimistic, philosophical & sociological twist to tackle topics that you won’t see or hear covered on mainstream networks.
Mariah Passarelli
Mariah Passarelli is a practicing civil defense attorney, avid home cook, and really spotty exercise enthusiast. She enjoys music of all kinds, traveling to both exotic and mundane locations, dive bars, hideous blazers, the occasional cigar, and spending time with her loved ones. She’s a big fan of the Pirates, LGBTQ rights, beer, and nonfiction. She has a full portrait of Hillary Clinton tattooed on her shin, which she got on purpose. No, really.
Nityananda Nanaki Devi Dasi Prins
Nityananda Prins goes by the nickname of ‘Nitchi’ and has been described as a fiery spirit, a strong-willed woman with a courageous heart and an empathetic soul. She moved to Pittsburgh in 2019 after a family shift occurred …what she describes as a Divine Disruption otherwise more commonly known as Divorce. She has operated a seasonal Personalized Christmas Kiosk at the Mall at Robinson for 14 years. With a love for acting that started in her youth, she has experience in performing, directing, and producing many community plays in West Virginia.
Denis Repp
Denis Repp is works in the IT department of a regional nursing care system, where he often subjects computer users to his stories before he agrees to help them change their passwords. Countless bar patrons can attest to his willingness to drone on with one story or another, some of which are occasionally interesting. He was a regular at the Moth, and has also appeared at Wordplay and the AcoustiCafe. One of his stories aired on the Moth Radio Hour and podcast. He truly appreciates the opportunity to share a couple of them with you.
Sarah Rose
Sarah Rose is a spoken word artist living on the sunny side of Pittsburgh. She is ranked among the top female poets in the city and has competed at the National Poetry Slam in Atlanta GA. Additionally, she has been a regional competitor of The Moth storytelling series. She is a badass single mother of three humans who frequently eat all her favorite snacks and forget to flush the toilet. This year Sarah Rose was published for the first time, raised an entire kid to adulthood, and had her first mammogram all while surviving a pandemic.
Prabha Sankaranarayan
Prabha Sankaranarayan is the President and CEO of Mediators Beyond Borders International. She is a conflict transformation practitioner who has mediated, facilitated and trained in Europe, Asia, Africa and the USA. Prabha is involved in regional, national and international civic activities focused on civil liberties, violence prevention, conflict mitigation & mediation and the recovery and rehabilitation of trauma survivors.
Moe Seager
Moe Seager is a poet and jazz singer living in Paris. He’s published seven poetry collections. He writes poems and performs jazz in Paris, NYC, Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
Todd Shaffer
After years of writing and illustrating funny greeting cards (genuinely funny, not lame funny) which was really a strategy that allowed him to write material, yet avoid actually facing people, Todd Shaffer decided to try the terrifying world of open mike storytelling. That led to telling stories at The Moth, WordPlay, RISK!, True Story Time, Drinking Stories and others. He has won multiple Moth StorySlams in Pittsburgh and Michigan and his stories have appeared on the Moth Radio Hour and the RISK! podcast.
Torrey Shine
Torrey Shine is a performance poet and storyteller. Her spoken word blends personal narrative and social commentary, engaging the audience through a mix of rhythm, rhyme, metaphor, wordplay, body movement, humor, and soul. After performing her first poem on television at the age of eight, she went on to compete at the US National Poetry Slam, the Individual World Poetry Slam, and the UK National Slam Finals. She is a two-time winner of the Jam Cruise Gong Show, two-time winner of the GRIT storytelling slam, a three-time winner of the Moth Storytelling Slam and was a featured performer at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival, where she regrettably set-clashed with Dolly Parton.
Maria Simbra
Maria Simbra is a memoirist, on page and on stage. She chronicles her careers in neurology and television news, and her unusual path to motherhood. Her written words appear in lit mags of verve, quirk, grief, menopause, baseball, fashion, and more. Her spoken words have been heard at WordPlay and Moth StorySlams. For 19 years, she was the multi award-winning medical reporter at KDKA. She has moved on to her own healthcare communications endeavors, where it is still all about the story.
Jim Tasillo
James (Jim) Tasillo is a native Pittsburgher who after a stint as a starving writer and photographer found himself working in the flooring distribution business. For a decade Jim was a regular storyteller at The Moth Story Slams and Grand Slams. His poetry and humorous essays have been published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His chapbook “Po-ems” was produced at The Soapbox in Philadelphia, PA by The Citizen Hydra Project. Jim has read his poetry at The Free Association Reading Series at Alphabet City. He is overjoyed by his children, grandchildren, his incredible wife and grateful for the storytellers, poets and musicians that enliven our world and those who listen.
Olivia Weber
Olivia Weber started her journey in the entertainment industry in Pittsburgh as Lead singer for the band Bitter Delores, opening for the Clarks numerous times and recording an album in Arizona. More recently she has gone on to be a model and actress, walking countless runway shows, being published in magazines, being a featured actor in a variety of media, and has been part of several local film projects.