Join The Moth for stories from the great beyond. Dark, wandering trails and startling discoveries. Throwing caution to the wind, clinging to the compass, and pressing on to see what lies around the next turn.
This year’s theme is Into the Wild: The Moth in Seattle hosted by longtime Moth podcast host and storyteller, Dan Kennedy.
Dan Kennedy is host of The Moth podcast, a longtime host and performer at Moth live events, and has spent much of the last fifteen years traveling the world performing and writing. His stories have appeared in GQ Magazine, on the Peabody Award-winning The Moth Radio Hour, in McSweeney’s, and in numerous print anthologies. He is the author of three books, Loser Goes First (Random House/Crown 2003), Rock On (Algonquin 2008, a Times of London Book of The Year, series rights bought by HBO) and American Spirit (Houghton Mifflin/Little 2013, a Publishers Weekly starred review). He has been a guest lecturer at Yale, and a guest author at The Harvard Lampoon in celebration of his work anthologized in The Best of McSweeney’s Humor. He lives in downtown New York, where he is currently working on another screenplay.
Storytellers
Andy Fischer-Price is a musician and an actor who – for now – lives in Los Angeles. He plays bass and sings in the psychedelic rock group Smoky Knights, is a founding member of folk trio The Good Mad, and occasionally tours with pop-duo Heffron Drive. His most recent work as an actor includes playing a Christian rock singer on ABC’s Modern Family and playing a woman in Cameron Fife’s Killing Diaz, a dark comedy feature due out in 2017. Andy and his sister, Katie Rose, are currently working with San Diego nonprofit SherpaCares.org to rebuild the Himalayan English Boarding School in Lukla, Nepal after it was destroyed in the 2015 earthquakes. The new school will be dedicated to their late father, Seattle mountaineer Scott Fischer.
Tamer Kattan was born an outsider, and that’s where he stayed. An Egyptian-born American from a family of Muslims, Christians and Jews, he is incredibly comfortable in the uncomfortable. School yard bullies and an abusive father led Tamer to hone his comedy of the underdog. All grown up and now, Tamer is an award winning, international comedian with TV and commercial credits in the United States and U.K. Tamer’s work shows a deep understanding of the human condition and an ability to talk about dark things in a light way. He lives in Brooklyn, New York where you can catch him performing standup comedy every night of the week. www.tamerkattan.com
Laurence Kerr served in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1974. After graduation from Infantry Officer Candidate School, he served two tours in Vietnam, the first as an infantry platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division, the second as an A-team leader with the 5th Special Forces Group. He also served in the Dominican Republic, Germany, and at several U.S. posts. In 2004, Kerr retired from a twenty-five year career in the U.S. Department of State as a Senior Foreign Service Officer. His last State Department assign-ment was with the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., where he was Associate Professor of National Security Strategy, lead-ing seminars in the history of the great empires, the history of military thought, and the national security process. Earlier assignments includ-ed diplomatic postings to Mexico, Singapore, Guatemala, Georgia, and Chile. Laurence and his wife Omie live on Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride from Seattle. He is the author of Captain Billy and the Lunatic, a book of poems largely drawing on the Vietnam experience. His current project is a history of the Mobile Strike Force Command in Vietnam.
Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based Writer, Speaker and Internet Yeller. Her work on race, feminism and other social issues has been featured in the Guardian, the Stranger, the Washington Post, Time Magazine and more. She is the Editor at Large at The Establishment. Her book, So You Want To Talk About Race will be published early 2018 with Seal Press. You can find her yelling on twitter at twitter.com/ijeomaoluo
Jessica Lee Williamson is a writer and an artist living in Los Angeles. She grew up in a small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After moving out west she graduated from The Second City Conservatory. You can see more of her work at jessicaleewilliamson.com.
The Moth – hailed as “New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket” by The Wall Street Journal – is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Each Moth Mainstage features simple, old-fashioned storytelling, by five wildly divergent ranconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors.
