One of our most popular events of the year, each Moth Mainstage features simple, old-fashioned storytelling, by five wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors. This year’s theme: There’s a Place for Us. Hosted by Jon Goode, our storytellers are: Alistair Bane, Keli Goff, E. J. Koh, Ivan McClellan, and Katharine Strange. Click “Learn More” to read their bios.

Host:

Jon Goode is an Emmy nominated author, poet, and playwright currently residing in Atlanta, GA. He has been a featured performer on HBO’s Def Poetry, TVOne’s Verses & Flow, and BET’s Lyric Café. Jon’s debut collection of poems and short stories, Conduit, has received to date 54 five star reviews, spent 16 weeks as a #1 title on Amazon and is the best reviewed book of poetry on Amazon for 2015/16. Jon has released his first novel, Mydas, which also debuted as a #1 title on Amazon. He is the regular host of The Moth StorySLAM in Atlanta, GA. IG: @jon_goode.

Storytellers:

Alistair Bane is a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Nation of Oklahoma and currently resides in Denver, Colorado. Besides being a storyteller, he is also a visual artist. He makes dance regalia, quilts, and paints. In 2016 he was a resident artist for the Denver Art Museum’s Native American Arts Program. In his spare time, he enjoys rehabilitating feral rez dogs, which is a much more relaxing hobby than it might sound like, as long as you don’t mind a tiny bit of growling.

Keli Goff is a multi-platform storyteller best known for chronicling the intersections of race, politics and gender in America. As a journalist and essayist her work has appeared in Time, the Washington Post, The Root, Vogue and Essence, among others. After spending much of her journalism career as a regular presence on cable news, in 2014 she transitioned off screen and began crafting stories for theater, film and television. She is a writer and producer on the new Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, and Keli’s play, The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls, which features Black women sharing humorous and heartbreaking stories about their hair was recently streamed by Baltimore Center Stage. She has previously written for the television series Twenties, Black Lightning and Being Mary Jane, for which she was awarded a 2016 NAACP Image Award. She was also nominated for two news Emmy Awards for her work on the documentary Reversing Roe (Netflix, 2018). She continues to serve as a contributor to The Daily Beast and to various NPR affiliates, most notably for KCRW’s Left, Right & Center. Born and raised in Texas, Keli is a graduate of N.Y.U. and Columbia University. Twitter: @keligoff www.keligoff.com

E.J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2020), winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award, long-list for the PEN Open Book Award, and the poetry collection A Lesser Love (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize for Poetry. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021). Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate, and World Literature Today. Koh is the recipient of fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, Kundiman, and MacDowell. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Creative Writing and Literary Translation. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle for English Language and Literature on Korean and Korean American literature, history, and film.

A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Ivan McClellan is a photojournalist and experience designer based in Portland, Oregon. His current photo project Eight Seconds (ig: @eightsecs) focuses on the stories of cowboys of color across the country. His essays have been featured in ESPN: The Undefeated, Dazed, Fast Company, and Juxtapoz. Ivan’s work has been showcased in museums including, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Booth Museum, and Oklahoma Contemporary. Ivan is a husband and father of two children.

Katharine Strange lives in Seattle with her husband, two sons, and two cats. When she’s not making inappropriate jokes about her religious upbringing, you can find her writing about mental health, racism, and education for outlets ranging from the Seattle Times to ScaryMommy. For social media, representation, and more, go to katharinestrange.com