KGB Bar

Laura Cronk’s first book of poems, Having Been an Accomplice, won the 2011 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and is forthcoming from Persea Books.  Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Barrow Street, Ecotone, WSQ, McSweeney’s, The Best American Poetry, and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel.  She is currently on the faculty of the Riggio Honors Program: Writing for Democracy at The New School.

Marie Ponsot has published numerous poetry collections, including Easy (2009), Springing (2002), The Bird Catcher (1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Green Dark (1988), Admit Impediment (1981), and True Minds (1957). Ponsot, who also translates books from the French, has taught in graduate programs at Queens College, Beijing United University and New York University. Among her awards are a creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association. She teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University in New York City, and was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010.