The Moth StorySLAM: Nine to Five

The Moth StorySLAM turns a night out into a stage. It's an open-mic storytelling competition where anyone who signs up can share a true, personal story on the night's theme—here, Nine to Five. Ten storytellers are chosen at random from the volunteers, and each steps up without notes to hold the room for around five minutes. The audience itself provides the judges, scoring every tale on both its content and the skill of the telling.

The winner takes that night's StorySLAM, and after ten monthly slams in a city, the champions move on to the GrandSLAM. Behind it all is The Moth, the New York-based nonprofit founded in 1997 to celebrate unscripted, first-person storytelling. The format grew out of poetry slams and now plays out in cities across the country and abroad, so you might catch familiar literary voices—or a total stranger whose story you won't forget.