KGB Bar

CRUST (Two Dollar Radio, October 2008; www.twodollarradio.com) is a ferociously potent and remarkably timely satire; the novel that Swift would produce if he took on our present Information Glut. Crust tells the archly comic story of Walker Linchak, an aged writer, Nobel candidate, and author of the Complete Series (The Complete Book of AIDS, The Complete Book of Terrorism). Linchak is suffering from a seven-month plague of writer’s block that New York Magazine says, “for candor and anguish, surpasses any we have on record.” One morning Linchak wakes to find a crust in his nose-- the “definitive crust of his life”—that awakens him to a new world of desire and enlightenment. What ensues is equal parts George Orwell and Christopher Guest, an insightful and hilarious journey through our hyper-technological age.

Lawrence Shainberg’s (www.lawrenceshainberg.com) books include Ambivalent Zen, Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World, and the novels Memories of Amnesia and One on One. He has had numerous essays published in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, the Village Voice, and a Pushcart Prize-winning monograph on Samuel Beckett published in The Paris Review.

“Incredible… One of the most perverse and single-minded satires I’ve ever read.”—JONATHAN LETHEM
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Peter Selgin’s first book of short stories, Drowning Lessons, won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award. His book on fiction writing, By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers. Another, The Secret Life of Fiction: 199 Meditations on Works-in-Progress. His autobiographical work, Life Goes to the Movies, was twice a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and second place winner of the the AWP Award for the Novel and will be published by Dzanc Books. His work has appeared in Salon.com, The Sun, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Boulevard, Poets & Writers, Colorado Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, as well as in the anthologies Our Roots Are Deep With Passion, Writing Fiction, Writers and Their Notebooks, foreword by Philip Lopate and Best American Essays 2006. He edits the journal Alimentum: The Literature of Food, and leads his own annual writing workshop in Vitorchiano, Italy. He lives in Spuyten Duyvil, the Bronx, New York.
“A stellar collection deserving recognition. Selgin possesses a mature, complex voice and is able to conceptualize, compose, and perfect stories of brilliant diversity and tone. High emotional intelligence, empathy, courage, and intellectual curiosity fuel this collection, giving it a rare narrative fire beyond the obvious and admirable excellence of craft.” --Melissa Pritchard
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Molly McNett’s work has appeared in The Best Nonrequired Reading 2005, Brain Child magazine, Missoouri Review, Black Warrior Review, New England Review and Other Voices. She lives in a farm in northern Illinois with her husband and children. She reads from her book: One Dog Happy
“These are stories for people who love stories, who dig characters and dialogue and a little nudge of plot, who find the close observation of all those small marvelous encounters that make up our days so essential to short fiction. “ Charles D’Ambrosio

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Suzanne Dottino/fiction curator,