Daniel Tovey
Daniel Tovey has spent his life on the South Coast of England and currently resides in Dorset. In the daytime, he teaches English to secondary school children and, by night, he researches, adapts and performs stories.
As an oral storyteller, Daniel took a back route into writing as a way of exploring the folklore he researched in more depth. It was not until his late twenties that he started taking writing more seriously and began to explore a wider range of genres. He has had his short stories published by online magazines such as Fudoki.
Q: If you could travel back in time, which of the great writers would you like to meet and why?
A: As a student of Japanese folklore, I’d love to meet Lafcadio Hearn. As an outsider, he was the first to record many Japanese folktales in the English language – some of which hadn’t even been written down in Japanese. I am sure that he would have many more he could pass onto me that never made it into print.
Q: Do you have a favourite quote? (From a book, film, song, speech…)
A: There’s a saying in storytelling circles that we repeat whenever someone asks about the veracity of one of our tales: ‘All stories are true; some of them even happened.’
Q: Is there a book that you keep going back to, and if so, how many times have you read it?
A: I love The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I’ve only read it the once, but I dip in and look at passages every now and then. It has a folkloric quality to it and that beautiful mist which seeps into all of its pages.
Q: What superpower would you like to have and why?
A: Is empathy a superpower? I’d like more of that. I wouldn’t want to be able to read thoughts (think of the horrors you’d discover) but I’d like to be able to read their feelings better – even the tucked away ones.
