KGB Bar

Jaffe Cohen is an award-winning standup comic (Funny Gay Males), screenwriter ("Hit and Runway") and novelist (Tush) but he’s most proud of his ability to make complete strangers laugh by sticking out his bottom teeth and making a face like his dog. 

Jessica DuLong is the author of My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work that Built America, A Personal and Historical Journey,winner of the 2010 ASJA Outstanding Book Award for memoir. In the book, which melds memoir, history, and reportage, DuLong recounts her transition from building websites to running the five 600-hp diesels aboard retired NYC fireboat John J. Harvey, using her story as a vehicle for tracing the country’s movement away from hands-on work toward an increasingly more virtual, screen-focused society. A mechanic’s daughter and Stanford graduate who bridges blue-collar and white-collar worlds, DuLong is one of the world’s few female fireboat engineers, and a journalist whose work has appeared in a diversity of publications, from Rolling Stone to Today’s Machining World. www.myriverchronicles.com www.fireboat.org

PENolan is the name Tricia began using when her ex-husband demanded a clause in their divorce decree requiring her to write under a pseudonym all because of a story she read at Drunken! Careening! Writers! As part of the research for her memoir, Tricia has been using her blog, Menopausal Stoners, to determine what an individual can say on the internet about a recognizable person and still avoid prosecution. She is currently working on The Menopausal Stoners Guide to Parenting, and really truly intends to start submitting stories somewhere in the very near future.

Shawn Stewart Ruff is the author of two novels---Finlaterand the just-released Toss and Whirl and Pass---and a devoted short-story writer. He is also the editor of Go the Way Your Blood Beats: Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African American Writers. He lives and works in New York City.