2024/25

Amy Tan
Abraham Verghese
Timothy Egan
Emily Wilson
M. Gessen
Special events:
The Moth Mainstage
Connie Chung

Malcolm Gladwell
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Everybody Reads: Javier Zamora

2023/24

Zadie Smith
Mary Beard
David Grann
Charles Yu
Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Special events:
The Moth Mainstage
Ann Patchett
Everybody Reads: Gabrielle Zevin
Barbara Kingsolver

2022/23

Abdulrazak Gurnah
Anthony Doerr
Lauren Groff
Patrick Radden Keefe
Ada Limón

Special events:
The Moth Mainstage
Amor Towles
Everybody Reads: Ruth Ozeki
Tom Hanks

2021/22

Daniel James Brown
Cathy Park Hong
Brit Bennett
Richard Powers
Edwidge Danticat

Special events:
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Mira Jacob

2020/21

Helen Macdonald
Madeline Miller
Ibram X. Kendi
Joy Harjo
Yaa Gyasi

Special events:
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Ross Gay

2019/20

George Packer
Amor Towles
Min Jin Lee
Susan Orlean
Colson Whitehead

Special Events:
Margaret Atwood
Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Tommy Orange

2018/19

Jill Lepore
Tara Westover
Tayari Jones
Jennifer Egan
Jaqueline Woodson

Special Events:
A Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin
DeRay Mckesson
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
Barry Lopez Horizon Book Launch

2017/18

George Saunders
Reza Aslan
Jesmyn Ward
Claudia Rankine
Viet Thanh Nguyen

Special Events:
Francis Ford Coppola
Joe Biden
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Mohsin Hamid

2016/17

Louise Erdrich
Don DeLillo
Colum McCann
Tracy K. Smith
Siddhartha Mukherjee

Special Events:
Michael Lewis
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Matthew Desmond

2015/16

Jane Smiley
Anthony Doerr
Adam Gopnik
Robin Coste Lewis
Mohsin Hamid

Special Events:
The Nation LIVE!
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Cristina Henríquez

2014/15

James McBride
Elizabeth Kolbert
Michael Chabon
Ruth Ozeki
Katherine Boo

Special Events:
30th Birthday Party (featuring Elizabeth Gilbert and Calvin Trillin)
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Mitchell S. Jackson

Poetry Downtown:
Terrance Hayes
Mark Doty
Anne Carson

2013/14

Salman Rushdie
Ann Patchett
Lawrence Wright
Chris Ware & Chip Kidd
Julia Alvarez

Special Events:
Malcolm Gladwell
The Moth Mainstage
William Stafford Centennial Celebration (featuring Li-Young Lee, Tony Hoagland, Paulann Petersen, Matthew Dickman, Kim Stafford, and Mary Szybist)
Everybody Reads: Justice Sonia Sotomayor

2012/13

Jeffrey Toobin
Barbara Kingsolver
Jonathan Franzen
Stephen Greenblatt
Nikky Finney

Special Events:
Mark Bittman
Ira Glass
David Byrne & Carrie Brownstein
The Moth Mainstage
Everybody Reads: Sherman Alexie

2011/12

Annie Proulx
Stacy Schiff
Sebastian Junger
Abraham Verghese
Chimamanda Adichie

Special Events:
National Book Award Finalists Announcement
Tom Brokaw
Everybody Reads: Heidi W. Durrow
The Moth Mainstage

2010/11

Margaret Atwood & Ursula K. Le Guin
Natasha Trethewey
Elizabeth Strout
Tracy Kidder
Art Spiegelman

Special Events:
Bill Bryson
Leslie Marmon Silko
Everybody Reads: Wes Moore
The Moth Mainstage

2009/10

Wally Lamb
Lydia Davis
Christopher Hitchens
Ruth Reichl
Edwidge Danticat

Special Events:
Tin House Anniversary Celebration
Karen Armstrong
Greg Mortenson
Al Gore
The Moth Mainstage
Isabel Allende
Rigoberto González (PEN World Voices Festival)

2008/09

Richard Russo
Annie Leibovitz
Michael Pollan
Ann Patchett & Elizabeth Gilbert
Scott Simon
Mira Nair

Special Events:
David Sedaris
W. S. Merwin
Calvin Trillin
Terry Tempest Williams

2007/08

Orhan Pamuk
Diane Ackerman
Colson Whitehead
Mary Oliver
Stephen Sondheim & Frank Rich
Marjane Satrapi

Special Events:
Richard Powers
Elizabeth Gilbert
Paul Hawken, Barry Lopez, & Rebecca Solnit

Poetry Downtown:
Li-Young Lee
Eavan Boland
Edward Hirsch
Lucille Clifton

2006/07

Calvin Trillin
Frank Rich
Frank McCourt
Suzan-Lori Parks
Mary Gaitskill & George Saunders
Jonathan Lethem

Special Events:
Stephen King
Scott Turow
David Sedaris
Will Shortz

Poetry Downtown:
Mark Strand
Kevin Young
Carolyn Forché
Charles Simic

2005/06

Cynthia Ozick
Simon Winchester
Alexander McCall Smith
Marilynne Robinson
Azar Nafisi
Peter Matthiessen

Special Events:
David McCullough
Garry Wills
Charles Jencks
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Coleman Barks: Rumi
Maya Lin
Paul Auster & Siri Hustvedt
Kaye Gibbons
Harvey Pekar

Poetry Downtown:
Robert Bly
Adrienne Rich
Philip Levine
Jane Hirshfield

2004/05

T. C. Boyle
Shelley Berman
Terrence McNally
Tracy Chevalier
Jane Smiley
Edward P. Jones

Special Events:
Steve Brodner
David Sedaris
Chris Van Allsburg
Roddy Doyle
Greil Marcus
Sue Monk Kidd

Poetry Downtown:
Ted Kooser
W. S. Merwin
Maxine Kumin
August Kleinzahler

2003/04

Jeffrey Eugenides
Sandra Cisneros
Tobias Wolff
Billy Collins
Lynda Barry & Matt Groening
Ian McEwan

Special Events:
David Guterson
Donna Tartt
Mark Kurlansky
Paul Theroux
Zelda, Scott & Ernest: A dramatic reading with Mary Karr, Calvin Trillin, & Robert Stone

Poetry Downtown:
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Paul Muldoon
Charles Wright
Carol Muske-Dukes

2002/03

Seamus Heaney
Zadie Smith
George Plimpton
Francine Prose
Andrea Barrett
David Mamet

Special Events:
September 11: West Coast Writers Approach Ground Zero
Ira Glass
Tim O’Brien
Yann Martel

Poetry Downtown: 
James Tate
Louise Glück
Galway Kinnell

2001/02

Stephen Jay Gould
Edward Albee
Edna O’Brien
James Atlas
Edmund White
Francine du Plessix Gray
Anchee Min
J.M. Coetzee

Special Events:
Joan Didion
David Sedaris

Poetry Downtown: 
Cornelius Eady
Robert Creeley
Naomi Shihab Nye
Jorie Graham

2000/01

Ursula K. Le Guin
Jeanette Winterson
John Ridley
Peter Carey
Robert Pinsky
Greil Marcus
Terry Gross

Special Events:
Andrei Codrescu
Maya Lin
Howard Gardner
Mike Rich

Poetry Downtown:
C. K. Williams
Adam Zagajewski
Claudia Rankine
Matthew Rohrer
Sharon Olds

1999/00

James Fenton
Russell Banks
Ann Patchett & Elizabeth McCracken
A. L. Kennedy
Ron Chernow
Michael Cunningham & Amy Bloom
Ira Glass

Special Events:
David Sedaris
Sarah Vowell
Gore Vidal
Solomon Volkov
William Kittredge & Alvin Josephy
Martín Espada
Michael Ondaatje

1998/99

Charles Frazier & Kaye Gibbons
Richard Ford
David Remnick
Barbara Kopple
Caryl Phillips
Julian Barnes
Salman Rushdie

Special Events:
David Sedaris
Adrienne Rich
Frank Gehry

1997/98

Elaine May
Grace Paley & Anne Lamott
Orville Schell
Amos Oz
Sherman Alexie
Gish Jen
Cristina Garcia
David Foster Wallace
Frank McCourt & Mary Gordon
Jules Feiffer
Chinua Achebe & Robert Lyons

Special Events:
Garrison Keillor
Michael Feldman

1996/97

Elmore Leonard
Antonia Fraser
Mary Karr
John Updike
Jim Harrison
Maya Lin

Special Events:
Paul Theroux
Bill Moyers
David Sedaris
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin & Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Frank Sulloway

1995/96

Kazuo Ishiguro
Anna Deavere Smith
Tim O’Brien
Doris Kearns Goodwin
John Fowles
Edward O. Wilson

Special Events:
Paul Theroux
Michael Ondaatje
Studs Terkel
Garrison Keillor
Gary Snyder
Naomi Shihab Nye

1994/95

Tony Hillerman
Lorrie Moore
Robertson Davies
Edward Said
A. S. Byatt
Michael Ondaatje
Nicholson Baker

Special Events:
Patrick O’Brian
David Sedaris
Bailey White
Tom Spanbauer
Charlotte Watson Sherman

1993/94

Jan Morris
Czeslaw Milosz
Robert Hass
Terry McMillan
John Edgar Wideman
Margaret Atwood
Tony Kushner
Saul Bellow

Special Events:
Paul Theroux
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Jacob Lawrence
Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence

1992/93

Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne
Philip Roth
Doris Lessing
Hanif Kureishi
Bill Buford
James Fenton
Charles Johnson

1991/92

William Styron
Garry Trudeau
Maxine Hong Kingston
Toni Morrison
Robert Coles
Carolyn Heilbrun & Amanda Cross

Special Events:
Garrison Keillor
Annie Dillard

1990/91

August Wilson
Wallace Stegner
Amy Tan
E. L. Doctorow
Eduardo Galeano
Jane Smiley

Special Events:
George Segal
V. S. Naipaul
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Jonathan Miller

1989/90

John McPhee
Joyce Carol Oates
Peter Gay
Brendan Gill
Andre Dubus
Wendy Wasserstein

Special Events:
Philip Glass
May Sarton
Carlos Fuentes
Gary Indiana
Margaret Atwood
Richard Ford
Tobias Wolff

1988/89

John Updike
James Gleick
Donald Barthelme
Louise Erdrich
Michael Dorris
Isabel Allende
Rosamond Bernier

Special Events:
Maya Angelou
Calvin Trillin
Annie Dillard
Fran Lebowitz
Jamaica Kincaid

1987/88

Larry McMurtry
Barry Lopez
Paul Theroux
Oliver Sacks
Bobbie Ann Mason
Robert Stone

1986/87

Alice Walker
Jonathan Miller
Ellen Gilchrist
Stephen Jay Gould
Roger Angell

Special Events:
Garrison Keillor
Doris Lessing

1985/86

Tom Wolfe
Susan Sontag
Fran Lebowitz
Maya Angelou
John Kenneth Galbraith

1984/85

Calvin Trillin
Ann Beattie
Norman Mailer
Pauline Kael