Will British Columbia and Canada delivers what celebrity adventurer and award-winning travel writer Phoebe Smith is looking for – inspiration for a story to send millions of people asleep every month? Provence, Antarctica, Britain and several other destinations did – will we?
Phoebe Smith is not a typical travel writer. She is travelling a new literary path – by reinventing travel writing and forging a new literary genre known as “Slow Literature”, alias “Slow Lit”, or sometimes “Slow Travel Writing”.
Ms. Smith is the world’s first and only official “Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence” – a role that she fills for Calm, the world’s top leading sleep and meditation app.
Sleep Stories – or bedtime stories for grown-ups – are sleep-inducing audio tales that mix words, music, mindfulness and sound-effects to help adult listeners wind down and drift off to dreamland.
Smith is based in her native UK but has previously lived in Canada – for a year in Toronto, before travelling the country, which she loves.
“I’ve also written lots about travel in Canada but I’ve never written a Sleep Story set in Canada or anything about BC. That’s why I’m coming – to change that”, says Phoebe Smith.
Calm describes Smith as the queen of “Sleep Stories”, and “The JK Rowling of Slow Literature”, the world’s fastest-growing new literary genre. “You’ve heard of Slow Food and Slow Cinema”. Now meet “Slow Literature” – half literature, half sleep aid and totally relaxing.
Calm offers users a choice of over 130 Sleep Stories, which have been listened to a total nearly 150 million times since their launch over two years ago.
They are narrated by everyone from Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey to Stephen Fry, the British writer and actor to Phoebe Smith herself.
If you tell Phoebe Smith that her writing sends you to sleep, she replies, “I hope so. That’s the point”, Smith added.
“It’s a totally different kind of writing to anything I’ve ever done. And that’s why I like it. With most kinds of writing I’m trying to build the tension – but here I’m doing the opposite. Anything exciting needs to go right at the start and then it’s all about winding people down, while also encouraging their imagination to play”, added Smith.
‘Blue Gold’, Smith’s and Calm’s single most popular Sleep Story has so far
Transported some 15 million listeners across the world on a calming audio journey through the lavender fields and sleepy villages of Provence in southern France. Smith’s speciality is non-fiction and specifically travel-themed Sleep Stories.
The World’s Only “Extreme Sleep Adventurer”
As well as being the world’s first official Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence, Smith is also a travel writer of several praised books and the world’s first and only “extreme sleep adventurer”.
In the latter capacity, she sleeps wild in such improbable locations as under boulders and inside of tree-trunks and glaciers. She has even written a book on the subject –‘Extreme Sleeps: Adventures of a Wild Camper’.
Phoebe Smith’s next “extreme” adventure will take her to Antarctica with her adventure partner Dwayne Fields to educate youth about the impact of climate change. For more information on #WeTwo Expedition; Penguin to Pole visit: http://www.phoebe-
Phoebe Smith will be in Vancouver on May 28th and June 4th and 5th 2019.
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