KGB Bar

Hosted by June Clark, Instructor, New York Writers Workshop

Participants include:

Celeste Miller has been teaching for the New York City public school system for seven years, after a long and successful career in the financial technology industry.  After completing the New York City Teaching Fellows program, Celeste taught art for three years to 5 to 12 year olds with autism, developmental delays and emotional handicaps at a small school in East Harlem. She then joined the staff of the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS) in Manhattan as a Learning Specialist, where she has developed, and continues to run, the PPAS Learning Center and its tutoring program. Celeste’s work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales and the Cardinal Points Literary Journal. Her latest work, a memoir, is called Teacher Clothes.

Heidi David’s nineteen years producing TV commercials was bound to have some sort of deteriorating effect on her brain. It did, in the form of an as yet unpublished novel.  Taking inspiration from pop surrealism, musical theater, and a lifetime of insomnia, The Flying Jewel tells the tale of a traveling circus where the line between what is entertainment and what is depravity grows thin (think David Lynch meets Glinda-the-Good-Witch). When she’s not writing or freelancing, Heidi lives a gluten-free existence in her Manhattan apartment while pining for the bagels of her youth.

Robert Manni drew on his career at New York’s top creative ad agencies to write his most recent novel, The Guys’ Guy’s Guide to Love. He holds a BA in English Literature from Villanova University and an MBA in Marketing. He is also a Reiki Master/teacher, certified advanced clinical hypnotist, marathoner, world traveler, devotee of New York City, and somehow survived twenty years of single life in Manhattan.

Jean Verthein is a runner up in Gival Press poetry contest, coordinator of Northern Manhattan reading series, and had two stays at the Ragdale Foundation. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and been involved in study tours of Italy, Afghanistan and Iran.

Sarah Dragonfly Brown considers herself a Transformational Adventurer. Inspired by her training as an actress at North Carolina School of the Arts, Interlochen Arts Academy, and Chicago’s Theater Oobleck, Sarah Dragonfly Brown holds a degree in Playwrighting from Hampshire College.  As Playwright-in-Residence for Theaterwork of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sarah was commissioned to work with psychiatric survivors to write “Spirit Club: Stories of Mental Discomfort and Healing,” and “Lovebird Jamboree: Love Stories from the Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender Community.” Her stage-play, “Bermuda Triangles: The Non-Monogamy Experiment,” first produced by Theater Rhinoceros of San Francisco, was later made into the film, “Mango Kiss,” distributed by Wolfe Video 2004.  She currently lives in New York City, where she is working on a memoir entitled, Wack-a-Doodle Woman, a story about finding dementia care for her eccentric mom. 

Mark Goldblatt is a political columnist, novelist, essayist and book reviewer who teaches at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York. His work has appeared in The New York Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Daily News, Newsday, National Review, The America Spectator, The Common Review, Philosophy Now and the webzine Ducts. His first novel, Africa Speaks, was published by Permanent Press in 2002. His second novel, Sloth, has just been published by Greenpoint Press.