The Moth

This archive of confession, catharsis, and the exuberance of truth lures readers to the storyteller's porch. Burns, artistic director of the award-winning The Moth Radio Hour, frees stories whetted for a live audience onto the page, proving the richness of great storytelling: that one can gain as much as a member of an audience communally cringing, laughing and weeping, as a reader privately surrendering to the complicity of human experience. Here, a Russian music teacher's tale of conviction in the face of machine gun-wielding soldiers is salvaged from the muffled audio of a handheld recorder; the clipped sentences of a veteran astronaut bear the fear in his voice as he recounts his crew's rescue of a spacewalk in peril; the fidelity of spoken pauses and "um's" retain the essence of Kimberly Reed's humor as she describes her long-lost hometown's embrace of her gender transition in the wake of her father's death. These selections bespeak the importance and popularity of The Moth as a storytelling venue. A live audience is wanted at times; some jokes are lost on the page without the accompaniment of audience laughter. However, these stories capturing the "biggest moments of their [storyteller's] lives" remind us that those who are willing to be vulnerable are our best teachers. (Sept.)