★ Now booking school visits for spring term 2027 ★ Book a visit ▶
Sam Gayton
School visits · libraries · festivals

Let's play with words

I love meeting young storytellers and readers: it's my favourite part of being a writer! Visits by me are high-energy and fun. Everything I do is aimed at fostering a love of reading and storytelling in young people.

Book a visitSee the workshops ↓
Sam leading a lively class workshop

What a visit looks like

Whole-school assembly

An interactive assembly of up to 60 minutes, with story-writing tips, readings from my books, Q&A and lots of playing around.

Up to four workshops a day

Creative writing, storytelling and performance. Each runs for up to 60 minutes, with up to 30 students.

Signings & competitions

Book signings, chats with smaller groups, and judging your story-writing competitions.

Before & after

Emails or Zoom chats with classes before and after the visit.

Sam leading an assembly in a school hall
Sam talking to a hall full of pupils with their hands up Sam chatting one-to-one with a pupil in a school library

Authors today are very lucky

Hundreds of years ago, being an author meant you sat in a stuffy little room called a garret with an ink pot and paper and a mug of ale or something, and you wrote. You wrote your books, and then after a few years you died of smallpox or something and you didn’t get famous and read by millions of people until hundreds of years afterwards.

Nowadays, being an author means that every once in a while you leave your stuffy little writing room – with its laptop and comfy chair and wireless internet – and you venture out to strange places you’ve never been to before, like Staffordshire and Essex and Leamington Spa.

And then, you visit the schools there, and you get to talk to children.

Getting to talk to children is one of the best things about being an author. Sometimes I wish I talked for children instead of writing for them. But then I’d have to be a teacher I suppose, and then I’d have to talk to them about boring things like Catherine of Aragon (surely the most boring of all Henry VIII’s wives) and the square root of the hypotenuse (and that’s only boring to me because I have no idea what it is).

Anyway. Authors today are very lucky, because unlike authors living hundreds of years ago we:

  • A)Usually don’t die of smallpox (fingers crossed)
  • B)Get to visit schools and tell children all about our books.

And if we’re REALLY, REALLY lucky,

  • C)We get to meet incredibly talented young authors, readers (yes, being a reader is a talent), illustrators, comedians, and so on. And sometimes they send us work about our books.

Here are some of them ↓

Made by readers & workshop pupils

A pupil's zine: My VoiceA zine made in a Super Zine workshopMacGuffin cards from a storytelling workshopRoller Cat, a beast drawn in Build-a-BeastA painted beast from Build-a-BeastAlchemy word list from a writing workshopA reader’s painting inspired by The Snow MerchantA classroom display about Lilliput, with Lily standing on a giant handA table covered in pupils' finished zinesA pupil's zine called Spooky Asthetic, with a traumatised frog and a peanutClay poos with googly eyes holding protest signs: No more poonamisRows of pupils' zines with titles like What If? and The Best Zine

Why schools book me

Award-winning books, two decades in classrooms, and a passion for live performance.

  • Twenty years of experience in schools, including several stints as a teaching assistant and key worker for students with SEN
  • PVG Scheme member (Scotland) and Enhanced DBS checked (England)
  • Member of the Society of Authors
  • A background in drama and music, as well as storytelling
  • Workshops delivered for the British Museum, Edinburgh International Book Festival and Oxford Playhouse
A pupil's handwritten thank-you letter
“The best part was when you said ‘I wished I worked at a pizza place’.”Jamie, after a library visit
A handwritten thank-you card from a pupil
“Thanks a lot for the books… Will Adam Sandler be in the movies?”A pupil’s thank-you card
Now booking · spring term 2027

Book a visit

Tell me a little about your school and I'll get back to you within two working days with dates and prices.

Visiting schools, libraries and festivals across the UK and internationally. Travel expenses are currently best for Edinburgh, the Central Belt and the North of England.