I used to drive an ice cream truck years ago when I was 21, 22 years old, and I got into a territorial dispute with another ice cream truck driver,” Peter Agüero said. “He, uh, he beat me with a hammer and I choked him out … It was the last day I worked there.”

By his own estimate, Agüero has told this story 200 times to friends and judges, including once at The Moth’s GrandSLAM in New York City. He beat out nine others in that competition which required, without notes, participants to tell the best true story in five minutes to win. Director of Production Sarah Jenness said that this show, and every other one The Moth has produced, sold out. She hopes the trend will continue on Sept. 29, when everyday Chicagoans get their chance to speak at the newest StorySLAM at Martyrs, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave.

The Moth is a non-profit organization, founded in New York City in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green. According to the organization’s Web site, The Moth was formed in Green’s home in Georgia. Back home, he enjoyed sitting on his friend Wanda’s porch during hot summer days telling stories, and when he moved to New York he brought the tradition with him. He began hosting informal parties where he and his friends would tell each other, along with any eager listeners, their tales. When the crowds got too large to fit in his living room he decided to form The Moth and started a weekly show where people can tell their stories to a real audience.

Currently, the organization’s main event is in Downtown Manhattan on The Moth’s main stage at the Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South. The Moth encompasses multiple programs including the different StorySLAMs, GrandSLAMs and the radio show, “The Moth Radio Hour.”

WBEZ is sponsoring the StorySLAM and aired a series of special episodes from the radio show in September and promos for Chicago’s first StorySLAM.

The theme for the first storySLAM will be “school” and there will be a different theme for each show, which runs the last Tuesday of every month. If the show goes well, organizers said they’ll make it twice a month. It will follow the same format as New York City’s storySLAM where anybody from the audience can step up and tell a story. All they have to do is drop their name in a hat and hope it gets drawn by the host. Three teams of judges pulled from the audience will score each story, and at the end of the night a winner will be chosen. The winner will then go on to the GrandSLAM to compete with nine other finalists. Jenness said audience members are encouraged to hiss or boo if they disagree with the judges’ decisions. She said she’s even booed Green on occasion.

Jenness said the reason The Moth has become so popular is because the medium of oral storytelling connects the audience to the storyteller more than other mediums like movies or books.

“You have the feeling you can really be yourself and talk about yourself truthfully,” Jenness said. “Audiences really respond to that; they enjoy that. You don’t have to [have your] guard up, you don’t have to seem like you’re someone else. There is a real validity to the human spirit.”

Jenness said they decided to expand the Slam to Chicago because of the fan base they’ve built here through their podcast, The Moth Podcast and the response their touring show received when it stopped at the Metro, 3730 N. Clark St. The people of the Midwest and Chicago have some great stories to tell and they want to get them on stage, she said.

Her favorite story since she started working at The Moth in February 2005 was one by New York Times reporter and former drug addict David Carr. He told his story about how he hit rock bottom while addicted to crack-cocaine. One day he was driving with his infant twin daughters in the back seat and stopped at a crack house to buy drugs, leaving his daughters waiting in his car in the dead of winter. When he came out he saw them and decided it was time to quit the drugs. The scene was the focal point for Carr’s Book, “The Night of the Gun.”

Comedian Mike Birbiglia has also added his talent for storytelling to The Moth by relating two tales on The Moth’s main stage, one of which was later broadcast on Chicago’s very own “This American Life.”

Jim O’Grady became a GrandSLAM winner in 2008 and also worked at the New York Times. He now works as a freelance writer and said he really had to relearn some things to become a storyteller.

“In journalism, you put your most important thing in the lead,” O’Grady said. “Storytelling is in many ways the opposite … what’s most important is to finish strong, to give them a real payoff so when they reach the end of the story, they’ve felt a catharsis or they’ve been rung out with laughter or surprise. That’s when you walk off.”

Agüero competed with O’Grady at a few of the GrandSLAMs and became one of the 19 GrandSLAM winners chosen along with O’Grady. He said he was terrible at first, but kept trying until it clicked.

“I got picked out of the hat and told a horrible story, but I kept going,” Agüero said. “About eight months later I started winning, and I kept winning. From that I met friends and started telling stories at other shows. I found The Moth by accident, and it was exactly what I should have been doing.”

O’Grady said he’s heard plenty of stories that have flopped, but he usually hears at least one really good one before the night is over.

“Anyone can put their name in the hat, any name can get pulled,” O’Grady said. “I have heard some stinker stories, everyone has. I’ve seen narcissists, incompetence, and boors. It’s not all triumph and delight, but I’ve never been to [a] show that hasn’t had at least one great story.”

O’Grady has many favorites, but he said one of the funniest ones he’s heard came from a Mormon woman named Elma Baker. Baker really wanted to find the right Mormon guy. She asked God to help her find him and in what looked like an act of serendipity, she got her prayer answered via an invitation to a Mormon Halloween dance. She built an elaborate fortune cookie costume with a lever her desired Mormon man would pull to get his fortune.

“It’s a very hot night and on the way to the dance, people start regarding her with horror. She doesn’t understand why,” O’Grady said. “She gets to the building where the dance is being held, she’s waiting for the elevator, and there’s a mirror there. She looks in the mirror and sees the fortune cookie costume has melted so it folds in on itself. She’s become a giant walking vagina.”

O’Grady remembered one sentence in particular.

“She had a good line where she goes, ‘So, I took it off and put my vagina in a closet, which I suppose is what you do when you go to church anyway,’” O’Grady said.