The Moth
American arts organization
The Moth is a nonprofit group based in New York City, dedicated to the craft of storytelling. Founded in 1997, the organization presents a wide range of theme-based storytelling events across the United States and abroad, often featuring prominent literary and cultural personalities alongside everyday people like veterans, astronauts, school teachers, and parents. The Moth offers a weekly podcast and in 2009 launched a National Public Radio show, The Moth Radio Hour, which won a 2010 Peabody Award. The Moth has published four books, including The Moth: 50 True Stories (2013), which reached #22 on The New York Times Paperback Nonfiction Best-Seller List; All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown (2017); Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible (2019); and How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth (2022). In September 2022, The Moth published an interactive card deck, A Game of Storytelling, which debuted at #1 on Amazon's top-selling card game list.
Origins
The Moth was founded in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate the feeling of sultry summer evenings in his native Georgia, when moths were attracted to the light on the porch where he and his friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales. Green and his original group of storytellers called themselves "The Moths", and Green took the name with him to New York City. The non-profit organization now runs over 600 different storytelling events a year in more than 27 US cities (including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit) and two cities outside the US (London and Melbourne) offering the unique perspectives of both average, everyday people, and literary or cultural personalities.
Live events
The Moth's live shows fall into several tiers of production, but each is dedicated to the art of unscripted, first-person storytelling. Every show has stories based on open-ended themes (Such as "Love Hurts," Holding on and Letting go," "Hot Mess," or "Conviction").
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7752399. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2009, 2010 and 2013.
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