Phoebe sends millions of people across the world to sleep each month with her travel tales as Calm’s (and the world’s) first Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence.

Sleep Stories – or bedtime stories for grown-ups – are sleep-inducing audio tales that mix soothing words, music and sound-effects to help listeners wind down and drift off to sleep. They also amount by now to a new literary genre. You’ve heard of Slow Food and Slow Literature. Well, Sleep Stories are Slow Literature – half literature, half sleep aid and the world’s fastest-growing new literary form.

If so, then Phoebe Smith is the JK Rowling of Slow Literature with her words being listened to some 100 million times since the stories began launching two years ago.

In 2019 they launched Sleep Story Collection of her soothing audio tales. The collection includes the world’s single most popular Sleep Story – Blue Gold, narrated by Stephen Fry, the acclaimed British actor and writer, and now listened to by some two million people a month and over 30 million in total.

She has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, the USA’s The List, CBC’s Sunday Show in Canada, as well as a whole host of newspapers, magazines and websites across the world including The Guardian, London’s Evening Standard, The Irish Times, The National Post, Red Bull and more.

In 2020 she penned the pilot TV script to the pioneering A World of Calm HBO series, writing the words to The Coral City, narrated by Lucy Liu.

She also occasionally posts a blog explaining the story behind the sleep on Calm.com, click on the photos below to read about the adventure behind the words of a few of her favourites...