Dispatch
This past August, as a part of our work with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Moth’s Artistic Director Catherine Burns and Producing Director Sarah Austin Jenness went to Uganda to work with African women writers. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Catherine and Sarah to hear about their experiences. Here’s an excerpt from our chat: Had you ever envisioned The Moth – or yourself – in Uganda? Catherine: Going to Uganda to work with The Africa...
I first heard The Moth in 2008; two days before I lost my job at a national broadcaster. Those two events are not unconnected. My employers were launching a series of radio stations and I was tasked with listening to hours and hours of these new ‘podcast’ shows that people were talking about. I’d trawled through a lot of terrible, terrible shows before I heard The Moth. I loved the fact it was ordinary people, the kind that you never heard in mainstream media, getting up...
On June 7th, 1997, George Dawes Green invited a small group of people to his home in New York City for the first Moth night. Pegi Vail, a founding member of The Moth’s board, remembers below: I’ll never forget when my friend George Green said to me, “I have this idea I want to tell you about and I want you to do this with me” at our mutual friend Roland Legiardi-Laura’s loft during one of Roland’s regular ‘Salons’ in 1995 or ’96. As I would later write in many appeal letters over the next cou...
We were absolutely thrilled to be included in this year’s NarrativeArc conference at Boston University. The conference “celebrates and explores narrative journalism, a powerful, unfettered, public but individually voiced genre, as it expands into many digital media.” Radio legend and The Moth Radio Hour‘s producer Jay Allison delivered the conference’s keynote “The Moth & Friends: The Rise of Stories Out Loud” about the importance of oral storytelling in an increasingly digital world. “I have...
Judy Stone, a dear friend of Katherine and long-time member of The Moth community, writes: Our much-loved, deeply admired friend Kathy Rich died last week, nearly two decades after her doctor said she had a year left, two at most. You might say she was living on borrowed time – except that Kathy didn’t borrow time; she owned it, planting her flag firmly and ruling that span of seasons fiercely, wisely, hilariously, benevolently, and beautifully. Hearing of Kathy’s passing, ...