KGB Bar

Pegi Vail is a cultural anthropologist and documentarian who teaches at Columbia University and NYU. Her forthcoming book Right of Passage explores the role of print and media travel stories in shaping our travel experience and destination perspectives. Her documentary-in-progress looks at the cultural and economic impact of backpacker tourism in West Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia (she is a reformed backpacker, herself!). Pegi has curated film and storytelling events at MoMA and the Museum of Natural History. She was a founding boardmember and current curator for Stories at The Moth .

Douglas Light is the author of the novel East Fifth Bliss, which received the Benjamin Franklin Award for Fiction. The screen adaptation of his novel, which he co-authored, is set to begin filming in October 2009. His fiction has won an O. Henry Prize and has appeared in the Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, Narrative, Guernica, Alaska Quarterly Review, Failbetter, and other magazines.