KGB Bar

Best Lesbian Erotica

Sharon Bridgforth
2 TBA

Jami Attenberg
Chris Weikel
Janice EIdus

Cheryl Burke
Christopher Borg
Xan West

Thaddeus Rutkowski
Mark O’Donnell
Rich Orloff

PE Nolan
Shawn Stewart Ruff
Jaffe Cohen

Elizabeth Whitney
Jenifer Levin
Christopher Bram
Bob Smith

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Jonathan Woods resides in Dallas, Texas. His noir crime stories and other writings have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Dogmatika, Plots with Guns, Thuglit, Pulp Pusher, Noir Originals and others. Visit his website at www.southernnoir.com. He reads from his collection: Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem
“Just as you settle into the stories and predict you have a feel for how they will proceed, Wood hits you between the eyes with a stunning twist or completely unexpected turn. His ability to switch genres in the space of one story after another is astonishing.” Ken Bruen

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Jacob Appel
Carl & Shelley (Andrea Alton & Allen Warnock)
Anne Elliott

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Patricia Eakins is the author of The Hungry Girls and Other Stories and The Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste (a novel), which won both the NYU Press Prize for Fiction and the Capricorn Fiction Award of the Writer’s Voice. She has also been awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review.

Most of Amy Holman’s publications are in poetry, including a prize-winning chapbook Wait For Me, I’m Gone.  She’s had work appear in Best American Poetry (1999), and a 2009 entry on that publication’s blog.  Four of her poems, and an essay about poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Amy’s essays can be seen in: The Subway Chronicles, The Practical Writer, and Knitting Through It All anthologies.  She is working on a novel.

Janice Eidus divides her time between Brooklyn and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  She has won numerous literary prizes, including two O. Henry Awards, and is widely published in leading journals and anthologies.  Her books include The War of the Rosens, Vito Loves Geraldine, and The Celibacy Club.  Her forthcoming novel is titled The Last Jewish Virgin.

Host Susan Tepper

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Tom Perrotta is the author of six novels, including The Abstinence Teacher and Little Children.

Amy Bonnaffons is a second-year fiction student in NYU’s Graduate Creative Writing Program.  She was born in New York and since then she’s spent time in Connecticut, Japan, Brazil, Thailand, and Burma.  She has taught writing and literature at the middle school, high school, and college levels.  In her spare time she likes to sing Balkan and Bluegrass music and wonder what Jesus did for fun.

Emily Brandt teaches English and yoga to high school students in Brooklyn, and co-edits No, Dear magazine.  Her poems have appeared in Swamp, Reconfigurations, and Podium, and her photos have appeared in The New York Times, The Rio Grande Review and The Jewish Week.

Georgie Devereux is a second year MFA student at NYU. She lives in Brooklyn.

Kimberly Faith Waid hails from Montgomery, Alabama. She received her B.F.A. from The Savannah College of Art & Design in Savannah, Georgia. She is a writer of both fiction and journalism—the latter having been published in ArtSlant, MetroMix, and The Los Angeles Times. When she is not at work on her first novel, she handles public relations for Washington Square, NYU’s nationally distributed literary journal. She is also a Fellow at Goldwater, a hospital on Roosevelt Island for patients with special disabilities. Here, she works with resident writers in transcribing their work and teaches weekly writing workshops. In her writing, she is inspired by sharks, civil rights, and old time radio.

About the Series: NYU Emerging Writers

The Emerging Writers Reading Series showcases the students of the NYU graduate Creative Writing Program, and features established writers as special guests.

Nothing Human is Alien to Us: What does a 9-11 Hero, George W. Bush, Aliens and Spirituality have to do with one another?  Everything.  Readings by a memoirist, a novelist, a sci-fi writer, and the editor of Lalitamba.

Sharon Watts, a visual artist, reads from the non-fiction Miss You, Pat: Collected Memories of NY’s Bravest of the Brave, Captain Patrick J. Brown. K.J. Fraser, a first time novelist, psychiatrist, and person of faith (and humor), reads from A Journey, a Reckoning and a Miracle, her creative response to despair over the Iraq War and the 2004 election. Carol Emshwiller, award winning science fiction writer, reads from one of her latest short stories, The Lovely Ugly. The readers will be introduced by Swamini Sri Lalitamba Devi, editor and publisher of “Lalitamba,” and author of the Mantra and the Goddess, TBP in 2010.

Kathryn J. Fraser was born in Melbourne, Australia and as a toddler immigrated with her family to the United States, eventually settling in Tennessee. An honors graduate of Dartmouth Medical School, she is currently an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque. Fraser is a long-term yoga practitioner and member of the First Unitarian Church. This, her first novel, was a Finalist in the New Mexico Book Awards. Website: www.jrmstory.com.

Sharon Watts is a commercial artist who has her drawings commissioned for various children’s books (and much more), a gardener, and the author of a most incredible book about a very spiritual and heroic man, the legendary firefighter Pat Brown. Captain Patrick J. Brown had an uncanny ability to be exactly where he was needed at exactly the right time. He died on September 11, 2001, surrounded by scores of burn victims he was trying to evacuate from the WTC’s North Tower. Outside the FDNY, the many people whose lives he touched insist that he was inspired when it came to knowing their hurt, and how to heal it. To deal with her loss, his close friend and former fiancée, Sharon Watts, began collecting stories about Pat, carefully stitching them together with her own personal narrative. The result is an intimate and moving literary experience, as well as a riveting introduction to a highly complex man whose legacy—encapsulated in Miss You, Pat-- is destined to live on. Learn more at: www.missyoupat.org. Sharon, a devout student of yoga, has held several book events in conjunction with the yoga studio that she and Pat attended, and she has been giving proceeds from her book to an organization that teaches yoga to NYC school children who need to reduce stress in their lives.

Carol Emshwiller grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and France. She lives in New York City in the winter and the Sierras in the summer. Emshwiller has written six novels, among them The Secret City, ISBN 13: 978-1-892391-44-5, 2007), and a short story collection called I Live With You (2005), both from Tachyon Publications.  Emshwiller has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, two New York State Foundation for the Arts grants, and two World Fantasy awards. Carol Emshwiller’s short stories have appeared in many literary magazines and science fiction magazines including TriQuarterly, Transatlantic Review, New Directions, Orbit, Epoch, F&SF, Century, and Crank. The Mount, won the Philip K. Dick award. Contact:htt://www.sfwa.org/members/emshwiller/index.html

Moderator:
A teacher of Lalitamba Mandiram, Swamini Sri Lalitambika Devi’s first book, Mantra and the Goddess, soon to be released, includes sacred teachings on healing the mind and a new translation of India’s fabled poem in praise of the Goddess, the Sri Lalita Sahasranama. Swamini also publishes a literary journal called Lalitamba (P. O. Box 131, Planetarium Station, New York, NY, 10024). She teaches meditation in hospitals, shelters and other places where people need to reduce stress in their lives. Check out the magazine at www.lalitamba.org. Lalitamba Mandiram is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and New York State public charity. Proceeds support charity projects for global harmony. Copies of the journal are also donated to hospitals, shelters, and prisons. Please contact us if your organization would like to receive copies. Contact: (212) 873-0140, lalitamba1000@yahoo.com.

*Books will be provided for sale by Mobile Libris,
917-539-4679, mobilelibris@earthlink.net

Nat’l Poetry Month
Guillermo Castro
Ron Drummond
TBA

About Amanda Marcotte

Amanda Marcotte was raised in Alpine, a small town in West Texas. She attended St. Edward’s University where she majored in English Literature, graduating at the top of her class. While working for UT Austin dealing with financial aid, she founded a blog called Mouse Words, which consisted mostly of musings on music and feminism. Amanda won the Koufax award for Best New Blog of 2004 for Mouse Words, and shortly after she went to work on another popular blog, Pandagon. She has also written for AlterNet and the Washington Post’s PostGlobal forum.

Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collection Venus Drives (named on of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and the novels The Subject Steve and Homeland. He read from his novel The Ask

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John Wray is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Right Hand of Sleep and Canaan’s Tongue. He was named Granta magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. The recipient of a Whiting Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. He reads from his novel, Lowboy

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

ANDREA SCRIMA was born in New York City and studied fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, where she lives and works. A LESSER DAY is her first book. Scrima has received numerous awards for her artistic work, as well as a writer’s grant from the Berlin Council on Science, Research, and the Arts and a National Hackney Literary Award. She is currently working on an anti-war children’s graphic novel titled ISHMAEL.

Lynda Schor is a prizewinning author of four published collections of short fiction, most recently, THE BODY PARTS SHOP, published by Fiction Collective 2 (FC2).  She’s the author of a multitude of anthologized stories, magazine articles, and reviews.  Her latest and fifth collection, SEDUCTION, will be published by Spuyten Duyvil Press in February.  She taught fiction writing at a number of universities, and at The New School for 25 years.  She now lives in San Miguel de Allende, MX.

Steve Almond is the author of five books.  His new book Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life will be out next month.  He has also, crazily, self-published a book called This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey composed of 30 very brief stories, and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.

Nelly Reifler is the author of See Through a collection of stories.  Her work has been published by McSweeney’s, BOMB, Post Road, Jubilat and others, and has been translated into several languages. 

Keith Lee Morris’ story collection Call It What You Want is his second book from Tin House, the first was the novel the Dart League King (2008).  Stories from the collection appeared in A Public Space, Tin House, Ninth Letter, New England Review and elsewhere.  He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Clemson University.

Host: Susan Tepper

Melville House is pleased to announce the addition of Lore Segal’s LUCINELLA to their acclaimed Contemporary Art of the Novella Series
Lore Segal was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. She emigrated to New York in 1951 and soon began selling to The New Yorker and other magazines. She is the author of Other People’s Houses. After Lucinella, which went on to receive numerous writing prizes, including an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her 1985 novel Her First American. Her most reent book, the story collection Shakespeare’s Kitchen, was a finalist for the 2008 Pulizter Prize. She reads from her novella, Lucinenlla.

“Lucinella is a shamelessly wonderful novel, so flawless one feels civilized reading it.” Stanley Elkin

TAO LIN was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1983, the son of Taiwanese immigrants.  His father was a pioneer in the field of laser eye surgery, and soon moved the family to Orlando, Florida, where Lin spent his childhood.  He moved to New York City in 2001 to attend New York University, where he earned a B.A. in journalism and an undergraduate creative writing prize.  He became well known while still an undergraduate for his literary website, Reader of Depressing Books, which took a close and often controversial look at mainstream literary culture.  In 2006, he published a poetry collection, You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am, followed in 2007 by the simultaneous Melville House publications of his story collection Bed and the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee.  His work expressed strong sentiments against mainstream culture and in favor of alternative lifestyles such as veganism.  The books became underground sensations and Lin became known for staging outrageous conceptual art events in support of them, such as giving a reading where he repeated the same sentence over and over again; blanketing New York City with stickers saying simply “Britney Spears”; and a successful online campaign selling “shares” in a future work for $2,000 apiece.  In 2008, Lin published his next poetry collection with Melville House, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.  It has been assigned as a text in several college-level psychology courses.  Lin’s next novel, Richard Yates, will be published in the fall of this year.

ZACHARY GERMAN was born in southern New Jersey in 1988. In 2006 he dropped out of high school and moved to Philadelphia, PA. He delivered pizza and other things on his bicycle, and later worked at a thrift store. In 2007 his story “letting me out first part” was selected by Dennis Cooper for inclusion in the Userlands anthology from Akashic Press, and an early excerpt from Eat When You Feel Sad was published as an e-book by Bear Parade. In 2008 he moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he completed Eat When You Feel Sad. He currently works as a dog walker in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. 

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Carol Rosenfeld
Jessie Male
Meri Weiss

Electric Literature presents Electric Nights at KGB, celebrating the release of their third anthology.

Featuring the following readers:

Rick Moody is the author of four novels, three collections of stories, and a memoir, The Black Veil. His new novel, The Four Fingers of Death, will be published in July 2010. He also plays music in The Wingdale Community Singers, whose new album, Spirit Duplicator, is out now.

Michael Muhammad Knight is a novelist, essayist, and journalist. He converted to Islam at 16, after reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and traveled to Islamabad at age 17 to study at a madrassa. His first novel, “The Taqwacores,” told the story of a fictitious scene of Islamic punk-rockers, and inspired the real-life Muslim punk movement which currently shares their name. With his deeply personal memoir “Impossible Man,” and forthcoming road odyssey “Blue Eyed Devil,” Knight explores through his own private experience the unique realities of being an American Muslim. His books have been taught at numerous universities, and he is a frequent speaker at colleges and academic conferences. Knight is also the subject of a forthcoming documentary, directed by Omar Majeed, on the “Taqwacore” movement spawned by his first novel.

Jenny Offill is the author of the novel Last Things, which was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Story, Epoch, The Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, and The San Francisco Review of Books, among other places.

Cristina Moracho is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA program. She is working on her first novel.

About Electric Literature:

Electric Literature’s mission is to use new media and innovative distribution to keep literature vital in the digital age. Their critically acclaimed short story anthology series has received widespread attention for its innovative distribution, experiments in digital storytelling, and video collaborations. Visit us at www.electricliterature.com
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contact: suzanne@kgbbar.com

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Eric Puchner teaches at Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner and John L’Heureux Fellow. His short stories have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Zoetrope: All Story, The Missouri Review, Glimmer Train, Best New American Voices 2005, and other journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart Prize and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Music Through the Floor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, novelist Katharine Noel. He reads from his novel: MODEL HOME
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Jillian Weise’s books of poetry are Translating the Body and The Amputee’s Guide to Sex. Her poem “Incision” was broadcast on Poetry Everywhere (PBS). She interned at The Paris Review and spent two winters in residence at the Fine Arts Work Center before joining the faculty at Clemson. Last year she travelled to Tierra del Fuego on a Fulbright where she completed her first novel The Colony.

“Part Wellsian dystopia, part medical mystery, part Hawthornian allegory, and part reality show, The Colony is a potent exploration of ethics in the Age of the Genome. But Weise’s novel is not merely an exceedingly smart and formally elegant novel of ideas—it is also a deeply compelling character-driven drama. Anne Hatley’s voice is irresistible—witty, assured, sexy, righteous, wounded. The Colony is a tremendous success, one of the most exciting first novels in recent memory.” —Chris Bachelder
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Fiction Curator Suzanne Dottino
Contact: suzanne@kgbbar.com

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Patricia Smith is the author of five acclaimed poetry volumes, most recently Dazzler, one of NPR’s Top Five Books of 2008.

Britta Anderson is a second-year MFA student in Poetry at NYU.

Ali Bujnowski grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania and has lived in New York for eight years.  Her short fiction has appeared in BOMB Magazine, and she is currently working on a collection of stories.

Sarah Dimick is a second-year MFA student in Poetry at NYU.

Nitin Rai, like his grandfather and father, was born in Sikkim, a Himalayan state in northeast India that is home. His father is Sikkimese of Nepalese origin, and his mother a second-generation Chinese immigrant from Kolkata. He attended The Doon School and Ohio Wesleyan University. Now, he is a Master of Fine Arts (Creative Writing, Fiction) candidate at New York University. In summers past, he has taught English to villagers in Sikkim, backpacked Europe, and traversed India by train. Cricket is his athletic mother tongue. He enjoys drinking Darjeeling tea and riding his motorcycle, a Royal Enfield Thunderbird. At present, he is writing a book entitled Girl, Mountain set entirely in Sikkim.

About the Series: NYU Emerging Writers

The Emerging Writers Reading Series showcases the students of the NYU graduate Creative Writing Program, and features established writers as special guests.

Jerry Williams is the editor of It’s Not You, It’s Me. He teaches creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College, and has two collections of poetry Casino of the Sun (2003, Carnegie Mellon University Press) and Admission (2010, Carnegie Mellon University Press). His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Pleiades among others. He currently lives in New York City.

Linda Gregg is the author of seven poetry collections: Too Bright to See; Alma; The Sacraments of Desire; Chosen by the Lion; Things and Flesh; In the Middle Distance; and All of it Singing: New and Collected Poems. In 2006 she received the PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry for her career achievement. She live in New York City.

Peter Covino is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island. Winner of the 2007 PEN America/Osterweil Award for Emerging Poets, he is the author of Cut Off the Ears of Winter as well as the chapbook Straight Boyfriend. Recent poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, and others. He is the founding editor of Barrow Street.

Martha Rhodes is the author of three collections of poetry: At the Gate, Perfect Disappearance, and Mother Quiet. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, and in the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College. She is also the founding editor and director of Four Way Books.

The six readers will be Anderbo poet Kathleen Kraft, Anderbo Fiction writers Kristen O’Toole and Erika Swyler, and Anderbo “fact” contributors Tove Danovich, Paul Vigna and Anne Fiero.  Anderbo (http://anderbo.com) is an online literary journal founded by author Rick Rofihe.

Press contact: Rick Rofihe, 917-705-4081, rrofihe@yahoo.com

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Reader Bios:

Erika Swyler has fiction in The Green Flash, Semaphore Magazine and Anderbo.com .  She is an award-winning playwright and a recipient of an InnermoonLit prize for best first chapter of a novel.  She holds a BFA from New York University.

Tove Danovich currently attends The New School in New York. She received a Silver Award in 2008 from Scholastic for her general portfolio in addition to winning Leeland, Michigan’s inaugural Stage Turner contest and Indiana-Purdue’s 08 Poetry contest. In addition, she has a short story pending publication in Slushpile.

Kristen O’Toole recently completed her MFA in creative writing at Columbia University. Her fiction has appeared in Anderbo, Fogged Clarity, Gigantic, and Flatmancrooked’s Anthology of Great New Writing Done During an Economic Depression. She is currently working on a young adult novel.

Paul Vigna has been a journalist for going-on 20 years, and currently writes and edits the Market Talk column for Dow Jones Newswires.  He lives with his wife and son in Verona, N.J. He has visited 47 states. 

Anne Fiero is a writer of poetry, fiction, essays and reviews. She curates the literary edition of Art Waves on WKCR-FM NY, featuring contemporary works of poetry, fiction, new music and radio drama in an experimental format. Her work has been published in White Fungus, The Quarterly Conversation, KGB Magazine, Nth Position, Poor Mojo’s Almanac[k], and more and she was featured as an Editor’s Choice on PoetryMagazine.com .

Kathleen Kraft received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a student at The Writers Studio in New York City. She lives in Hoboken, NJ, where she teaches elementary school movement. Besides anderbo.com , her poetry has also been published on Willows Wept Review. 

Andrew Zornoza is the author of the novel Where I Stay. His short fiction and essays have appeared in magazines such as, Gastronomica, Sleepingfish, Confrontation, Porcupine Literary Arts, CapGun, and Matter Magazine, among others. Born in Houston, Texas, and a graduate of Princeton University, he has taught at The New School University, Gotham Writers’ Workshop and in Parsons Design & Technology MFA program. He is a contributing editor to the arts journal Helping Orphans Worldwide (H.O.W.). He currently lives in New York City.

Risa Millera graduate of Goucher College, with an MFA from Emerson College. She is the recipient of the PEN New England Discovery Award. She’s taught fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts and currently on the writing faculty at Emerson College and on the graduate writing faculty at Bar Ilan University. She is the author of the highy aclaimed Welcome to Heavenly Heights. She reads from her latest novel My Before and After Life
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About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Susan Jane Gilman is the author of the New York Times bestseller Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress and the bestseller Kiss My Tiara. A commentator for NPR, she has written for many publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Ms., Washington City Paper, and Real Simple, and has received several literary and journalism awards. Although Gilman currently lives in Geneva , Switzerland , she remains, eternally, a child of New York. You can learn more about her at http://www.susanjanegilman.com

Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels: A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Speak Now, Celeste Ascending, As Soon As It Rains, and Quite the Other Way.Her latest book, a memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, was published in August, 2009. Kaylie chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, based on Kaylie’s experiences growing up as the daughter of celebrated novelist James Jones (From Here To Eternity, The Thin Red Line, Whistle), was made into a Merchant-Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson, Leelee Sobieski, Jesse Bradford, Barbara Hershey, and Isaac de Bankole. Kaylie is a graduate of Wesleyan University. She teaches in the MFA Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton and at the Wilkes University MFA program in professional writing.Born and raised in Paris, Kaylie lives in New York with her husband, daughter, and two mixed-breed mutts, Layla and Natalie.

Bob Knightly reports: I made my first sale, a pilot script for a TV series, The System, to Aaron Spelling TV Productions and NBC in 2002, which got me a couple trips to Hollywood on the arm to confer with a “Show Runner”; a couple bucks, no movie, no future, no regrets. Sold my first short story to editor Tim McLoughlin for Brooklyn Noir in 2004 because we were both in Kaylie Jones’ fiction class. Got another story in Manhattan Noir and Best American Mystery Stories 2007; Editor of Queens Noir 2008. Published a first novel, Bodies In Winter, from Severn House, 2009: an NYPD crime novel based on my past life as a police lieutenant. Currently, I’m a criminal defense lawyer in Albany, to which I fled in 2007, hoping to evade extradition.

Charles Salzberg is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in New York magazine, Esquire, and the New York Times.  He has written a number of non-fiction books, including From Set Shot to Slam Dunk and Soupy Sez: My Zany Life and Times, His latest novel, Swann’s Last Song, was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best PI Novel--he lost, but he’s contesting the decision, and asking for a recount.  He is a founding member of the New York Writers Workshop, where he teaches writing.  And he’d like to thank Kathleen Warnock for this opportunity to read at KGB, the only bar he frequents.

Renette Zimmerly is an award-winning art director who lives and works in New York City. Her short story, Throw Out Your Lifeline, won an award from Georgia College and was published in The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin. Her play, A Piece of Cake, was produced widely in the New York area.

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

Peter Straub, the multi award winning writer of such novels as Ghost Story, Koko, Mr X, and In the Night Room. His most recent novel is A Dark Matter, published by Doubleday this month. He is also the editor the recent Library of AmericaAmerican Fantastic Tales

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Daryl Gregory, whose first novel, Pandemonium, won the 2009 Crawford Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. His second novel, The Devil’s Alphabet, was recently named a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. He’s currently working on a contemporary fantasy novel unrelated to either of the first two books.

Series resumes.

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Cartoonist and New York Times “Happy Days” columnist Tim Kreider presents a slideshow of the cartoons he drew during a bout of heartbreak, recounting his descent into obsessive stalkerish jeaousy and madness, piteous public sobbing, and gradual emergence into something like being okay again, except not really. Whether you’re currently heartbroken, alone and bitter, or a happy couple looking to canoodle and gloat over the less fortunate, this will be a hilarious, poignant, and weirdly comforting Valentine’s Day evening.

His articles have appeared in Film Quarterly and The New York Times and his cartoon “The Pain – When Will It End?” has appeared in the “Baltimore City Paper” since 1997. His Web site is thepaincomics.com.

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Xavier Trevino dropped out of the Pratt Institute film school in his senior year after succumbing to the lure of the drug culture of the time. He spent the next twenty-odd years in various low-paying jobs and using heroin and cocaine, as well as spending 18 years on methadone. He got clean in 2001. Xavier started taking creative writing courses offered by the 32BJ union local of which he is a member in 2005, and in 2006 published his first short story “The Door” in a book called “Kindred Spirits”, sponsored by the Workers Writing Project. He has been taking Charles Salzberg’s advanced non-fiction writing classes since the spring of 2008 and continues to write about people he encountered during his using years. He was a guest blogger on Phoenix House’s Recovery website this past fall.

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Before John Gorman’s stories made it into print he snapped the Eyesore of the week for the Queens Ledger. He’s performed in Off-Off Broadway shows, poured artisanal wines for collectors and enophiles alike, taught tennis, and held a handful of other odd jobs along the way. His fiction, essays, and articles have appeared in Mississippi Review, RiverSedge, Monkeybicycle, Thieves’ Jargon, Circle Magazine, Plum Ruby Review, The Rose & Thorn, Nexus, and elsewhere. His debut novel Shades of Luz is published by All Things That Matter Press. He is the founder and publisher of the Paper Cut blog that covers a wide range of topics from the literary arts, pop culture, personal essays and current events. He also scribes interviews.

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Erica Abeel is the author of 5 books, including the novel Conscience Point (Unbridled Books), which has been called “Sex in the City meets Brideshead Revisited.” Her novel Women Like Us was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection. A former dancer, Abeel is also a journalist who has written the “Hers” column for the New York Times and covers film for a variety of publications, including indieWIRE.com, IFC.com, and the Huffington Post.

Rachel Resnick (Love Junkie) & Cintra Wilson (Caligula For President) present:  “Love/Hate:  A Valentine’s Smackdown” featuring Todd Colby, Elissa Schappell, Trey Ellis, Susan Shapiro, Richard Edson, Melissa Febos and more TBA!

Dani Shapiro’s most recent book’s include Black & White , Family History and the best-selling memoir Slow Motion.
Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Elle, Bookforum, Oprah, Ploughshares, among others, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure and guest editor of Best New American Voices 2010.
She reads from her book: Devotion
“Dani Shapiro’s novels and nonfiction are always rich in honesty and intelligence, about the psyche and lost hearts and families, about messes and shame and what calls us to transcend; and how painfully we find out who we are, and how inadequate and stunning the journey is, how it goes both so slowly and in the blink of an eye--how dark and then what (against all odds) so brilliantly lights the way.” Anne Lamott

Geoffrey Becker’s collection Black Elvis won the 2008 Flannery O¹Connor Prize for Fiction. He is the author of two previous books, Dangerous Men, a short story collection that won the Drue Heinz Prize, and Bluestown, a novel. His other awards and honors include an NEA fellowship, selection for The Best American Short Stories anthology, the Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune, and the Parthenon Prize. He teaches writing at Towson University in Maryland, where he also directs the graduate program in professional writing. He reads from his novel” Hot Springs

“Hot Springs is a road trip layered with desire and mistakes and the impossibility of keeping a secret from rising through the years."‹Ron Carlson, author of The Signal

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Myla Goldberg is the author of Wickett’s Remedy and the bestselling Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2000. Her third novel, The False Friend, will be published by Doubleday this coming October.

Danielle Blau’s poems, short stories, and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic online, Black Clock, The L Magazine, multiple issues of Unsaid, among other publications. Danielle graduated from Brown in 2007 with a BA in philosophy, and has begun work on her MFA in poetry this year at NYU’s Creative Writing Program. She lives in Brooklyn.

Madhubhashini Ratnayake is a Fulbright sholar from Sri Lanka. She has two books of short fiction published in her country - one which won the State Literary Award given for English fiction (Short Stories) in 1991.  Both books were short listed for the Gratiean Award, the literary prize established by Micheal Ondaatje, for best creative writing in English by Sri Lankan writers. At NYU she is working on her first novel.

Sarah Sala is a first year poet in New York University’s MFA program. From December 2007- August 2008 she was the editor in chief of the University of Michigan’s literary magazine, Oleander Review.  Her honors include: an Academy of America Poets Prize, the Marjorie Rapport Award for poetry, an Avery Hopwood Award for nonfiction, and a Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship. Currently she lives in Manhattan and serves as the crew coach at New York University.

Ben Blum is a second-year MFA candidate at NYU. He has published scientific articles on game theory, protein structure prediction, and computational models of human learning. He comes from Denver.

About the Series: NYU Emerging Writers

The Emerging Writers Reading Series showcases the students of the NYU graduate Creative Writing Program, and features established writers as special guests.

Robyn Gertner’s work has appeared in Font and VOYA, and she has written for Publishers Weekly and Seventeen Magazine. She is currently working on her first novel, How to Wire a Family Tree, which is about a Brooklyn family’s battle against family genetics, Nikola Tesla, and lawn gnomes.

Johanna Lane was born in Ireland and studied English Literature at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she was awarded the Hemingway Prize for short fiction. When she graduated, the University wanted to get rid of her as quickly as possible, so they gave her money and sent her to America for an MFA in fiction at Columbia. Her first novel, recently short-listed for the University of East Anglia’s Charles Pick Fellowship, is called The Blue Edge of the World.

Mo Zee is a fiction writer and a graduate of the Columbia MFA program.

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What is Faculty Selects?  The first Thursday of each month the Columbia MFA program hosts a reading series with writers selected by the faculty. These fresh talents have finished their coursework and are finished with or near to finished with their first books, but do not yet have a book contract and/or an agent. In recent years, many of our featured writers have achieved critical and commercial success; this is your chance to glimpse who you’ll be reading in 2011!

Faculty Selects is curated by Bryan VanDyke and Emily Austin.

Join your hosts Larry “Le Grande Ratso” Sloman and Mark Jacobson for a Who Dat Think Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints edition of the KGB Radio Hour. The usual profusion of guests from the high and low sectors of local society will include: the guitar wizard Elliot Sharpe, the tremendous Shilpa Ray at the mighty harmonium, and our super fav bandleader Christine Ohlman, the spectacular Beehive Queen, who will be accompanied by the all-time great G.E. Smith. Also assorted talkers, including bartender Danny Christian with this month’s ultra paranoid but undeniably true conspiracy theory. 

TRUE STORY: Nonfiction at KGB is back from its winter hiatus with another season of fantastic nonfiction writers and storytellers! 

Please join us on Tuesday, February 2nd at 7pm for readings by Robin Romm (THE MERCY PAPERS) and Richard McCann, two writers who explore the perils of the corporal body, confronting mortality in themselves and in those they love.  (It’s February-- did you expect sunshine and songbirds??)

The Mercy Papers is a wrenching chronicle of the three weeks before Robin’s mother’s death from cancer. Angry, heartbroken, exhausted and sad, Robin gives an achingly close recounting of her mother’s final days--alongside vivid memories of her mother’s youth and health-- to create a testament to a daughter’s love, and a validation of the grieving person’s furious reluctance to “just let go.”

ROBIN ROMM is the author of two books. Her memoir, The Mercy Papers, was named a Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and Top 100 Nonfiction Book by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her collection of stories, The Mother Garden, was a finalist for the PEN USA prize and the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Book of the Year Award.  Her stories have appeared in numerous national journals (Tin House, One Story, Threepenny Review) and anthologies. She lives in New Mexico with her boyfriend, the writer Don Waters, and their cattle dog, Mercy. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at New Mexico State University.

RICHARD MCCANN will be reading from his work-in-progress, a memoir titled The Resurrectionist, which examines the meanings of illness and mortality through a narrative exploration of his experience as a liver transplant recipient.  He is the author of Mother of Sorrows, a work of fiction, and Ghost Letters, a collection of poems (1994 Beatrice Hawley Award, 1933 Capricorn Poetry Award). He is also the editor (with Michael Klein) of Things Shaped in Passing: More ‘Poets for Life’ Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in such magazines as The Atlantic, Ms., Esquire, Ploughshares, Tin House, and the Washington Post Magazine, and in numerous anthologies, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 and Best American Essays 2000.  He has received grants and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, on whose Board of Trustees he served from 2000-2008.

Beverly Gologorsky will be reading from her novel, The Things We Do to Make It Home. First published in 1991, the novel became an instant classic with its heartfelt rendering of the lives of Vietnam vets’ families. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this ground-breaking novel, Seven Stories Press has reissued it in a new edition. A longtime activist, she has written for the New York Times, the Nation, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and her essays are included in widely read anthologies on war and friendship. The Things We Do to Make It Home was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Fiction selection, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award finalist.

Helen Benedict will read from her new novel, The Edge of Eden (Soho). “Benedict’s portrait of the generation of British parents that came of age during World War II is smart, original and unflinching.” (Paula Sharp) Benedict will also speak about her non-fiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon, 2009). Published to critical acclaim, it tells the tales of women soldiers and the harrowing violence against them at the hands of their male “comrades.” Benedict’s articles are widely published, and her work on women soldiers won the 2008 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Her novels have been listed as best books of the year by The Los Angeles Times and the New York and Chicago public libraries. She is a professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Nora Eisenberg will read from her new novel, When You Come Home (Curbstone), which explores an untouched topic in American fiction—the tragic aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and the profound illness that followed almost a third of the troops home. As it tracks the lives of veterans and their families, the novel uncovers the buried truth of America’s favorite war and the hollowness of victory. The novel was a Grub Street Fiction Prize finalist; Eisenberg’s first novel The War at Home, (2002) was a Washington Post Rave Book of the Year and her second novel, Just The Way You Want Me (2003) received ForeWord Magazine’s Gold Prize in Fiction. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in such places as The Partisan Review, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, Tikkun, Alternet, and the Guardian UK. She directs the City University’s mentoring program for emerging scholars.

Simon Van Booy grew up in the mountains of Wales and in Oxford. He won the H. R. Hays Poetry Award. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, Long Island University, and Southampton Library. His fist collection of short stories, the critically acclaimed The Secret Lives of People in Love, has been translated into eight languages. He lives in Brooklyn and he reads from his collection Love Begins in Winter.
“Pitch-perfect . . .Love Begins in Winter is a splendid collection, and Van Booy is now a writer on my must-always-read list. “ Robert Olen Butler
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Jami Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, graphic novels, books, television, and urban life for The New York Times, Jane, Print, New York, Nylon, Radar, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, Salon, Plenty, Nextbook, Time Out NY, eWeek, and others. Her fiction has been published by Nerve, Five Chapters, Smokelong Quarterly, 3: AM Magazine, and Spork. She recently appeared in the anthologies Sex for America, Future Misbehavior and Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, and has an essay forthcoming in Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts Her debut collection of stories, INSTANT LOVE, was published by Crown/Shaye Areheart Books in June 2006. THE KEPT MAN was published by Riverhead Books in January 2008, and is now available in paperback. She reads from her latest novel: THE MELTING SEASON. She lives in Brooklyn.
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curator/fiction suzanne dottino contact: suzanne@kgbbar.com

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Authors Teri Coyne (“The Last Bridge”), Masha Hamilton (“31 Hours”), Stacy Parker Aab ("Government Girl") and Louisa Ermelino ("The Sisters Mallone") read from their latest work and explore Ordinary Women: Extraordinary Heroines - a new paradigm for the modern heroine.

The authors have written characters or known women who are in remarkable circumstance: women on death row; Afghan women fighting to have their voices heard; alcoholics struggling to regain their life; journalists seeking understanding.  These are ordinary women leading extraordinary lives; they defy convention and show courage under fire even if it looks like they are fumbling to the finish line.  They are the new heroines.

The authors will be joined by a surprise roster of guest authors who will share journal entries from The Afghan Women’s Writing Project, begun in 2009 by Masha Hamilton to foster creative and intellectual exchange between Afghan women writers and American authors and teachers. Discover why the most radical thing you might do in 2010 is speak honestly about your life.

Teri Coyne’s novel, The Last Bridge, debuted in July 2009, and was called, “…a compelling debut…” (Publishers Weekly) and a “…psychological tour de force…” (Booklist).  Writing since she received her first typewriter on her 10th birthday, she studied poetry with Philip Shultz, novel writing at Iowa Summer Writers Workshop, memoir with Frank McCourt and fiction with Masha Hamilton. A former stand-up comedienne, she also explored filmmaking, playwriting, acting, producing and directing. Teri lives in New York. (www.tericoyne.com)

Masha Hamilton is a former Associated Press and Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent and the author of four acclaimed novels, most recently 31 Hours (2009), named by The Washington Post as one of the best thrillers/mysteries of 2009. Hamilton is also the founder of two world literacy programs: the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.Her previous novels include Staircase of a Thousand Steps (2001); The Distance Between Us (2004) and The Camel Bookmobile (2007). www.mashahamilton.com

Stacy Parker Aab is the author of Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House (Ecco/HarperCollins). She has written political and social commentary for The Huffington Post and Salon.com, and served as the primary contributor to Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurrican Katrina and its Aftermath (McSweeney’s).  She continues to work on Katrina-related research projects, including The Katrina Experience: an Oral History Project.

Louisa Ermelino’s novels celebrate the power of women, her Italian american ancestry and her New York City neighborhood. The author of Joey Dee Gets Wise, The Black Madonna, and The Sisters Mallone is the Reviews Director at Publishers Weekly Magazine and has worked at People, Time and Instyle magazines.

Sarah Malone is in the MFA program in fiction at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and blogs about things literary and otherwise at sarahwrotethat.com. The story in this issue of Open City is her first publication.

Ben Nachumi is an underemployed physicist and tutor living in Brooklyn. This is his second appearance in Open City.

Christopher Sorrentino has written three books, including Trance, a National Book Award finalist. He is currently working on a novel about identity.

Marisa Matarazzo holds an MFA from the University of California at Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Dorothy and Donald Strauss Endowed Thesis Fellowship. At Yale, she received the Wallace Prize for fiction writing, the Arthur Willis Colton Scholarship, and was a two-time recipient of the Elmore A. Willets Prize for fiction. DRENCHED is her first book. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

“Marisa Matarazzo combines abstractions and firm frameworks with the luscious visceral shape-shifting world of bodies and attraction—put all together, it’s like watching dyed chiffon spill out of an iron lattice. This is a collection that marks its own territory and stamps it out with a textured beauty.” —Aimee Bender

Willy Vlautin Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, He started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and quickly became immersed in music. It was a Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver’s “Too Much Water So Close to Home” that inspired him to start writing stories, and he has to date published two novels, The Motel Life and Northline.  Vlautin founded his cult favorite band Richmond Fontaine in 1994. The band has produced seven studio albums to date, plus a handful of live recordings and EP’s. Driven byVlautin’s dark, story-like songwriting, the band has achieved critical acclaim at home and across Europe. Vlautin currently resides in Scappoose, Oregon, and has just released Richmond Fontaine’s eighth album, “We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River.” An avid fan of horseracing, Vlautin can often be found writing behind a closed circuit monitor at Portland Meadows racetrack. He reads from his novel LEAN ON PETE

“In his new novel, LEAN ON PETE, Vlautin takes us on a journey with a boy and his horse, whose desperate lives lead them through a world of loneliness, with just enough kindness from strangers to keep them going another day.  It’s this spot of hope that lifts the reader, revealing the true potential of human nature, and keeps me coming back after Willy Vlautin breaks my heart. And he does break it, every time.” —Hannah Tinti
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Fiction curator:
conatact: suzanne@kgbbar.com

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Jonathan Dee’s new novel is The Privileges. He is the author of four other novels, including Palladio. He is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper’s, and a former senior editor of the Paris Review. He teaches in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and the New School.

“The Privileges is an intimate portrait of a wealthy family that gradually becomes an indictment of an entire social class and historical moment, while also providing a window onto some recent, and peculiarly American, forms of decadence. Jonathan Dee is at once an acerbic social critic, an elegant stylist, and a shrewd observer of the human comedy."―Tom Perrotta,
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Stefan Merrill Block was born in 1982 and grew up in Plano, Texas. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004. The Story of Forgetting is his first novel. He lives in Brooklyn. He reads from his new novel:
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Fiction Curator: Suzanne Dottino contact suzanne@kgbbar.com

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Spire Press New Author Reading
January 23rd, 7:00 pm, KGB Bar

FICTION

Damian Dressick - Fables of the Deconstruction (Spire Press, forthcoming)
Two-time Pushcart nominee, Damian Dressick’s stories have appeared in more forty literary journals, including failbetter.com, New Delta Review, McSweeney’s (online), Caketrain, Vestal Review and Alimentum. Currently a PhD. candidate at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, Damian can be found online at www.damiandressick.com.

NONFICTION
Shelly Reed - Editor, Spire Press
Shelly, a recovering poet, has published online here and there including Rougarou, The Furnace Review, and quite a few small print journals currently decomposing in landfills and poet’s bathrooms.  She is reading from her book-in-progress featuring misadventures in a far-from-wholesome Oklahoma town. 

POETRY
Christina Olson - Before I Came Home Naked (Spire Press, forthcoming)
Christina Olson’s work has recently appeared in Brevity, The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 3, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review. She is currently a visiting professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and lives online at www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com.

Elizabeth Rees - Now That We’re Here (Spire Press, 2008)
Elizabeth Rees has published over 250 poems in such journals as: Agni, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, River Styx, Northwest Review, Mid-American Review, and New England Review. She was a 1990 recipient of a Washington D.C. Commission for the Arts grant in Poetry and received a fellowship in poetry from the Montgomery County Council for the Arts (MD) in 1997.  Her poems have appeared on buses in northern Virginia and were engraved on benches in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. Her poem “Dig” won first prize in SWINK’s 2005 national contest and the poem “People of the Word,” won second prize in the Ann Stanford contest.  Elizabeth has taught creative writing and literature full-time at universities including the U.S. Naval Academy, Johns Hopkins University’s graduate program in Washington, D.C., Howard University, Macalester College, Boston University and Boston College.

Matthew Hittinger - Pear Slip (Spire Press, 2007)
Matthew Hittinger was born in Bethlehem, PA (not far from the grave of H.D.) and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan where he won a Hopwood Award for Poetry and The Helen S. and John Wagner Prize. A finalist for the 2005 National Poetry Series and semifinalist for the 2006 Walt Whitman Award, his work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fine Madness, DIAGRAM, Memorious, Meridian, DMQ Review, and elsewhere, including Best New Poets 2005. He lives and works in New York City.

JoAnn Balingit - Your Heart and How It Works (Spire Press, 2009)
JoAnn Balingit’s work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Salt Hill Journal, Smartish Pace and elsewhere, including the anthologies DIAGRAM.2 and Best New Poets 2007. She serves as Delaware’s poet laureate, appointed in 2008. She teaches poetry in schools and community organizations throughout the state.

C.K. Williams is the author of numerous books of poetry, including The Singing (2003), which won the National Book Award, and Repair, winner of a Pulitzer Prize. His new book of poems, Wait, is due in April 2010.

Christopher Baughman is a second-year MFA student in Fiction at NYU.

Anelise Chen is a first-year MFA student in Fiction at NYU.

Erica Kalnay currently a second-year MFA student in Poetry at NYU.  She previously studied Creative Writing at Iowa as an undergraduate.  Her interests, in writing and life, include children and childhood, animal rights, mental health, and how people survive through trauma and pain.

Alex Morris hails from Mobile, Alabama. He believes in the Trinity and loves his mother. After attending Loyola University New Orleans, he moved to Boston where he took up waiting tables and playing in a mostly unsuccessful bicycle travel band called the “Minstrel Cyclists.” He is first year poet at NYU, a non-smoker, and loves to talk about his feelings. One little known fact about Alex is that he is the original model for the Honey Bear squeeze bottle.

About the Series: NYU Emerging Writers

The Emerging Writers Reading Series showcases the students of the NYU graduate Creative Writing Program, and features established writers as special guests.

David Anthony Durham, winner of the 2009 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, is the author of Acacia: The War With The Mein and its sequel, The Other Lands. He’s currently at work on the concluding third volume.

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Lev Grossman is the author of the novels Codex and the N.Y. Times bestselling The Magicians. He’s currently working on a sequel to The Magicians. 

Books will be for sale by Bluestockings

Lisa Bellamy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Sun, New Ohio Review, Fugue, Tiferet and Harpur Palate, among other magazines.  In 2008, she won the Fugue Poetry Prize.  She received Pushcart Prize nominations in 2008 and 2009 and was a finalist for the Gerald Stern Poetry Prize in 2008 and 2009. She received honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007.  She teaches New York City Level I, Online Level III and Online Advanced Poetry at The Writers Studio.

Lesley Dormen is the author of THE BEST PLACE TO BE: A NOVEL IN STORIES.  She is the recipient of a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.  Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares and other magazines and literary journals.

Lucinda Holt edits Sex, Etc., a sexual health magazine and Web site, written by teens for teens. Her non-fiction work has appeared in the
anthology What Your Mama Never Told You. She is working on a collection of short stories.

Rachael Nevins is a freelance writer and editor. She works at home in Brooklyn while taking care of her 16-month-old son. Her blog is The Variegated Life.

Cynthia Weiner’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, Open City, The Sun, and has won a Pushcart Prize.  She is the Assistant Director of The Writers Studio.

About the Series: KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction

The KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction showcases the finest in contemporary fiction from new and emerging writers.

Archipelago Books presents a reading by Basque author Unai Elorriaga and English translator Amaia Gabantxo from Mr. Elorriaga’s latest novel, Plants Don’t Drink Coffee.

Unai Elorriaga won the prestigious Spanish Premio National de Narrativa in 2002 for his first novel, Sprako Tranbia (A tram to SP). He is also the author of the novel Van’t Hoffen ilea (Van’t Hoff’s Hair) and numerous anthologiezed short stories. He is a professor and translator at the Instituto Labairu de Bilbao.

Amaia Gabantxo is a literary translator, writer, and reviewer. Her work has appeared in many journals and newspapers, including the Times Literary Supplement and The Independent. Her translation of Anjel Lertxundi’s Perfect Happiness was realeased by the University of Nevada Press in 2007. She moonlights as a flamenco singer.

Plants Don’t Drink Coffee
Four stories narrated from four different perspectives criss-cross throughout this powerful and lighthearted novel. The young Tomas—who wants above all else to be intelligent—draws us into the web of his curious mind, magnifying misdventures and stumbling upon all sorts of small wonders. Through an omniscient narrative, we learn all about his eccentric entourage, from their surrealist creation of a rugby field on a golf course, the mystery of why a couple of forty years never married, and the intrigue surrounding his grandfather’s role in a European carpentry competition.

“Short sentences, measured words, dialogues pregnant with silences, letters...all can be found in this lively narrative. It is the characters, the stories, and above all, the transparency and gracefulness of the child’s outlook that add freshness and strength to Elorriaga’s latest book."—Berria

Archipelago Books is a not-for-profit press devoted to publishing excellent translations of classic and contemporary world literature. In five years, they have brought out over fifty books from over twenty languages, allowing innovative literary voices from all corners of the world to be heard in the U.S.

Brad Leithauser – The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and an acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist, Brad Leithauser is most recently the author of the novel, The Art Student’s War, named a 100 Notable Book of 2009 by the New York Times.  A former drama critic for Time, his work has also appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and he writes frequently for The New York Review of Books.  In addition to receiving a MacArthur Fellowship, he has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Ingram Merrill Grant, and in 2005 was inducted into the Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland for his service in promoting Icelandic literature.  Formerly an Emily Dickinson Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Mount Holyoke College, he currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University in the writing seminars department.

Katharine Weber – Named one of the 50 Best Young American Novelists by Granta magazine in 1996, Katharine Weber is today the author of five novels, the most recent, True Confections, to published in January 2010.  Her fiction debut in print, the short story “Friend of the Family”, appeared in The New Yorker in January 1993.  Her first three novels were named New York Times Notable Books, with her third, The Little Women, also being named a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year.  Her book reviews and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post Bookworld, and The Los Angeles Times Book Review.  Ms Weber currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University, and has taught at Yale University, the Paris Writers Workshop, Connecticut College, and Goucher College.

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Behind the Book is a literacy nonprofit working with low-income students in NYC public schools. Our mission is to excite children and young adults about reading. Working in the K-12th grades, we bring authors and their books into individual classrooms to build literacy skills and nurture a new generation of book readers.

www.behindthebook.org

Jennifer Frost Banks has published poems in LIT, Agni, Seneca Review, jubilat, Quarter After Eight, Pleiades, Boulevard, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and GutCult. She is an editor at Yale University Press where she manages the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Priscilla Becker’s first book of poems, Internal West, won The Paris Review book prize, and was published in 2003. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Open City, The Paris Review, Small Spiral Notebook, Boston Review, Passages North, Raritan, American Poetry Review, Verse, and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets.

Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Boston Review, The Blue Letter, and Spinning Jenny.

Frances Justine Post’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Seneca Review, Western Humanities Review, and others. She lives in Manhattan.

Joanna Sit has taught literature and creative writing at Brooklyn College, NYU and now teaches Composition at Medgar Evers College. Her work has appeared recently in The Seneca Review, The Tonopah Review, The Relief Journal, Natural Bridge, Fickle Muses, and Poem. 

Jacob Siegel is an Army veteran who served in Iraq. He is a Brooklyn Native and still resides in the borough.  Mr. Siegel’s work has been published in New York Press, New Partisan and The Arch.  Currently, Mr. Siegel is writing a book, which he describes as a pulp detective novel set inside an epic detective novel. He would rather not say anything more about it but if agents or wealthy patrons are interested the working title is Lucifer’s Nightgown.

Maurice Decaul is a Marine Veteran who served in Iraq. He emigrated from the Caribbean Island of St. Vincent as a child and grew up in Brooklyn where he now lives with his Wife and children. Mr. Decaul is a student at Columbia University and a poet. His work has been published in Nine Lines, an anthology of veteran’s writing.

Brian Laguardia is an Army veteran who served in Iraq. He is a Manhattan native and still resides there. Mr. Laguardia has an extensive background in non-profit and education work. He is currently the Veteran’s Support Service Coordinator at New York City College of Technology and a graduate student at New York University.

Roy Scranton is an Army veteran who served in Iraq. He is originally from Oregon but now resides in Brooklyn. He is a graduate student at The New School for Social Research earning his MA in Liberal Studies. Mr. Scranton’s work has been published in Denver Quarterly, LIT, canon, Glyphs and Nine Lines, an anthology of veteran’s writing.

Phil Klay is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. He grew up in White Plains, New York and now lives in Manhattan. Mr. Klay is a graduate of Dartmouth College and is currently completing an MFA at Hunter College.