Grant Given to University of Derby Graduates and Scholarship Alumni: How the College of Storytelling Altered the Lives of Three Creatives

We’re overjoyed to announce that The Tenth Magpie are working in partnership with House of the West Wind: College of Storytelling! After two years of business development and challenges to secure funding, House of the West Wind’s Director and Drut’syla, Shonaleigh, invited the team to pitch our passions for the literary world. We talked business, books and our debut publication, Overload. A day later, we received some great news about a grant and immediately booked our flights to Benidorm!

Jokes... we purchased our first test prints (which both came back damaged – and delivered to the wrong address – but let’s not talk about that).

So, how did three master of arts creative writing graduates become business owners and in partnership with the College of Storytelling? During Covid, Conor and I met because we were fortunate enough to get scholarships for ‘Word Dancing’ from House of the West Wind and embarked on a week of intense zoom classes learning narrative through a tradition called the ‘drash’ – a form of storytelling passed down through a long line of Drut’syla until it was uprooted and very nearly destroyed by the holocaust. Luckily for us, and the some-4000 stories contained in the tradition, a survivor called Edith Marks managed to impart her knowledge to her grand-daughter, Shonaleigh, who now runs House of the West Wind and has made it her life’s work to catalogue and tell these stories that have never been written down. Shonaleigh travels the world to tell and teach, but the prestige her name has gained over the years has not stopped her giving opportunities to involve working-class creatives in her endeavours through bursaries. Exhibit A: us!

The drash is hard to explain... imagine you’re a hero in a forest and you’re fighting a dragon but you’re also the dragon and an onlooker and you’re also a bird in one of the burning trees and you’re actually also the burning tree itself and while all these things are happening you have to remember a list of ten numbers that are assigned random words, while simultaneously researching hippopotamus cavities and writing haikus.

See, I tried my best, but I don’t think I explained it very well… I suppose you should learn more by visiting Shonaleigh.uk and booking one of her fantastic courses, such as Walking the Wildwoods, which I had the absolute pleasure of taking part throughout November 2024. We stayed in a 400-year-old mansion, told stories by multicoloured fires and ran around like well-fed monkeys.

Photo of Treowen from the grounds by James Canvin, 2024 @j.canvin

For a couple of years The Tenth Magpie lingered as an idea as we failed to secure funding through various pitching competitions. It didn't become real until another student on our Masters handed us copies of her final year project and we loved it so much we became desperate to publish it. Before we knew it, the company had a third director in Abbie, and one of the best graphic designers we could have hoped for. Overload was in our hands and we were determined.

While I was frolicking in Welsh grass and pretending to be a sheep thanks to the drash, Abbie and Conor were dismissed at yet another pitching competition. This is where Shonaleigh and her husband stepped in, offering to 'open up some avenues for us.' In the coming months, we would pitch our company once again, no longer to the closed, uncaring ears of business moguls, but to a company who genuinely believed in our ethos. I attempted to fight the waterworks, successfully thanks to Shonaleigh having tissues on hand. Let this be a lesson, future drash students: always, always have tissues on hand.

One of our dreams at The Tenth Magpie is to support diverse and working-class writers from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and we're over the moon that our first partnership speaks wholeheartedly to this ethic. Keep an eye out for not only Overload, but the next couple of projects we take on thanks to this wonderful opportunity from the College of Storytelling. Maybe we can have you writing, drashing and thriving through bursaries one day.

Overload launches at Wordwise on May 30th, 2025. Come to Dubrek Studios in Derby, listen to some wonderful local talent and perhaps get your hands on a limited edition hardback copy of our debut publication. See you there.

Remember to follow our socials for updates, and for more on the drash you can follow Shonaleigh on her website Shonaleigh.uk, Facebook, or Instagram under the handle @thedyslexicstoryteller