Interviews

Building Stories: Bringing narratives to life

Listen to our recent panel discussion on storytelling as part of this year's Margate Bookie literary festival

Strange Tourist

08 Nov 2025 — 4 min read

[L-R] Zita Whalley, Sé Nomayo, Katie McGarry, Andy Malt, Sidonie Carey-Green, Hughie Gavin. Photo: Chris F Clark

Strange Tourist was asked to host a talk as part of this year's Margate Bookie literary festival. With the nine day festival focussed (understandably) on the written word for the most part, we wanted to do something different. In Building Stories, we looked at stories in other forms and how they come to be.

Strange Tourist editors Zita Whalley and Andy Malt were joined by theatre maker Katie McGarry, songwriter Hughie Gavin, dance filmmaker Sidonie Carey-Green and founder of Margate Queer Library Sé Nomayo.

Among things discussed, the wide-ranging conversation traversed writing music to elevate stories on screen, bringing real life stories to the stage, translating oral history into movement and using individual accounts to build a picture of a place.

While on paper these four panelists are doing very different things, the commonality within their processes emerged as the talk went on; at the heart of everything they do are stories, they just have different ways of telling them.

Breaking up the discussion, we were treated to a performance by Katie McGarry, who performed a selection of letters from her show Letters You'll Never Send, while Hughie Gavin played a piano improvisation.

We also watched section of Sidonie Carey-Green's film The Body As Data, although that has been cut from this audio recording. Watch the trailer for the film here:

About the panelists

Hughie Gavin is an Emmy-nominated composer, arranger, producer and musical director based in Margate. His work has included global campaigns for WWF and Audi, commissions for the 2019 Turner Prize as well as multiple choral collaborations including HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, BBC’s Silent Witness, and with Universal Records, Ninja Tune, City Slang, Sub Pop and Moshi Moshi Records. From the Institute Studios in Margate, he leads both a contemporary vocal ensemble, the Institute Collective, and The Social Singing Choir.

Katie McGarry is an actor, singer and theatre-maker. She makes work about relationships, the rawness of the nitty gritty, silliness and finding the little bits of magic in life. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Bindlestick Theatre Company and recently co-created comedy show Shakespeare’s Royal Company. Other credits include West end, UK Tour, Open Air Shakespeare, directing and producing new writing for Off West End. Katie has been an associate artist and regular performer for companies such as Looping the Loop, Screaming Alley Cabaret, POW! Thanet and Ramsgate Festival of Sound since 2015.

Dr Sidonie Carey-Green is a UK-based dance filmmaker and practitioner-researcher whose work explores the intersection of movement, film, and technology. Her work investigates connections between ideas of local identity and choreographic mapping. She is the co-creator of The Body As Data, a collaborative performance project working with people impacted by the UK’s border regime. Through workshops, creative research, and live events, this project uses movement, sound, and surveillance technologies to re-map erased stories and challenge systems of surveillance.

Dr Sé M. Nomayo is a writer and researcher who explores and experiments with connections to place, particularly through queer placemaking. Their PhD examined the spatialised activist practices of lesbians in 1980s London. In June 2025, they opened the Margate Queer Library & Archive, a free DIY space for the community aimed at increasing access to queer histories, methods, and theories, especially those shared, materialised, and remembered in Thanet.