KGB Bar

Chris Adrian, named by the New Yorker as one of America’s best young writers - a “20 under 40” - is the author of three novels and one story collection.  His most recent novel is The Great Night, an “inventive and scarily beautiful...extraordinary novel” that recasts Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to modern-day San Francisco.  Chris’s fiction has appeared in TheNew Yorker, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Story and in Best American Short Stories.  He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and lives in San Francisco, where he is a fellow in pediatric hematology-oncology.

Ayad Akhtar’s “self-assured and effortlessly told” debut novel, American Dervish, “is an immensely entertaining coming-of-age story” set in the Pakistani-American community of Milwaukee in the early 1980’s.  Ayad, a first-generation Pakistani-American who himself grew up in Milwaukee, is also an actor, playwright, and screenwriter.  His most recent screen role was in HBO’s Too Big To Fail.  He was a star and co-writer of The War Within, which premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay and an International Press Academy Satellite Award for Best Picture - Drama.  His latest stage plays are The Invisible Hand, which will premiere at St. Louis Repertory Theater in March 2012, and Disgraced, which premieres this month at the American Theatre Company in Chicago.  Disgraced is also under option with the Broadway producers of Urinetown and Wicked.  Ayad lives in New York City.

Julie Otsuka’s second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2011, and a Library Journal Top Ten Book of 2011. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly pronounced it “A delicate, heartbreaking portrait...Readers will finish [this] exceptional book profoundly moved.” Her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, was a 2002 New York Times Notable Book, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2002, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers finalist. Julie is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Library Association Alex Award.  She lives in New York City.