Storytellers

Anita Shontel Woodley is an multi award-winning journalist, actress and visual artist from Oakland, California. As a national producer for WUNC-FM’s The Story with Dick Gordon, Anita’s won numerous prestigious awards from the Harry Chapin Foundation for Hunger & Poverty, the National Association of Black Journalists, and an Emmy with CNN News. Anita is also the creator of Mama Juggs, a one-woman Breast Health and Women’s Issues show and the 100 Living Rooms Breast Cancer Awareness Project touring throughout the US. She has received ovations and praises on stage Off-Broadway, Los Angeles, Chicago and Durham. In 2011 Mama Juggs won the “Best of the Best!” award at the MALI Women’s Film & Performance Arts Conference in Austin, Texas. Anita has been invited to perform for audiences ranging from nuns at Sacred Heart Monastery to university students in Yaounde, Africa. In 2010 while visiting the Cameroon rainforest, she reunited with her maternal Tikar tribe, becoming the first African-American descendant since enslavement to return to the bush village N’Ditam. She was honored with a traditional naming ceremony and learned her native language. Recently she was named a recipient of the 2012 Durham Arts Council's Emerging Artists Grant to produce her solo performer play about the men in her family's struggle to fit into society.