KGB Bar

Jerry Williams’ first collection of poems, Casino of the Sun, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2003, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.  His second collection, Admission, published by Carnegie Mellon in 2010, received the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award.  In addition, he served as editor of the anthology, It’s Not You, It’s Me: The Poetry of Breakup, published by The Overlook Press in 2010.  His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Witness, and many other literary journals.  He lives in New York and teaches creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College.

Beth Gylys is an Associate Professor at Georgia State University. She has published two collections of poetry—Spot in the Dark (Ohio State University Press, 2004) and Bodies That Hum (Silverfish Review Press, 1999). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares.

Donna Masini is the author two collections of poems—Turning to Fiction (W.W. Norton & Co., 2004) and That Kind of Danger (W.W. Norton & Co., 1998). Her poems have appeared in such journals as American Poetry Review, Open City, TriQuarterly, The Paris Review, and Parnasus. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, and a Pushcart Prize, she is an Associate Professor of English at Hunter College. She lives in New York City.

Ravi Shankar is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest and most highly reputed online journal of the arts, and chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust. He has published or edited seven books or chapbooks of poems, including the National Poetry Review prize winning “Deepening Groove,” and W.W. Norton’s “Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond,” called “a beautiful achievement for world literature,” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Puschart Prize, appeared on the BBC and NPR, been featured in The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has performed his work around the world, including at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and at the Miami Book Fair. He is currently on the faculty of CCSU and the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong.