KGB Bar

Sara Batkie is a first year fiction student at NYU. She got her undergrad in the untamed wilds of the midwest at the University of Iowa. Her work has not been featured in any literary magazines since high school when her awful poetry was selected for her local library’s annual Youth Writing anthology, the traumatic public reading of which prompted a switch in genre. She hopes tonight goes better as NYU does not offer a Non Fiction degree.

Michael Burger is a student in the MFA program in fiction at New York University. He also teaches at NYU Law School. He is at work on an existential mystery.

Lisa Jarnot was born in Buffalo, New York in 1967. She attended the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1986 to 1989, and later received a MFA from Brown University. She has edited two small magazines (No Trees, 1987-1990, and Troubled Surfer, 1991-1992) as well as The Poetry Project Newsletter and An Anthology of New (American) Poetry (Talisman House Publishers, 1997). She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: Some Other Kind of Mission (Burning Deck Press, 1996), Ring of Fire (Zoland Books, 2001 and Salt Publishers, 2003), Black Dog Songs (Flood Editions, 2003) and Night Scenes (Flood Editions, 2008). Her biography of the San Francisco poet Robert Duncan is forthcoming in 2009.

Scott Reding is a Midwesterner, originally from the Chicago suburbs. In 2007, he received his Bachelors in English from the University of Southern California. After a yearlong slowdown in Illinois, he moved east and is in his first year poetically studying at NYU.

Levi Rubeck is not funny. He is not from Wisconsin and did not graduate college in a timely manner. His parents aren’t married, his childhood wasn’t traumatic, and his poetry is not lauded. His goals are not commendable, his actions are inexcusable, and his beard is indefatigable.