Interviews
by Anne K. Yoder
When I spoke with Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians of Melville House Publishing at their Hoboken office on the “Left Bank” as they fondly called it, in 2007, they had just won the Mariam Bass Award for creativity in independent publishing. They had also…
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by John Reed
by John Reed These are the notes that I took in preparation for, and during, the Brooklyn Book Festival's National Book Critics Circle Panel, which took place in the lecture hall of the Brooklyn Historical Society on September 16. The panel was part of the…
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by Joshua Cohen
Steve Erickson’s many novels read as if written for the readership of other worlds—worlds not different from ours so much as parallel, the real turned upside-down, inside-out, and yet centered, inevitably, around Los Angeles. With Zeroville, Erickson gives us his tightest establishing shot yet.
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by David Hunter On the surface, Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America seems like it will be a "let's get to know the neighbors" punk-rock companion piece to Paul Barrett's American Islam. If that doesn't quite describe it, it's because author Michael Muhammad…
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by Suzanne Dottino
Not a Sunday night goes by when I don't think of Ken Foster. As I stand behind the duct-taped podium wedged in the corner of the KGB Bar, just as I am about to introduce the authors, I think: Would he approve of my selection?…
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by Suzanne Dottino
Interview by Suzanne Dottino I met Jhumpa Lahiri when she read from her novel, The Namesake , at KGB Bar as part of the Sunday Night Fiction Series along with Susan Choi (author of American Woman). Jhumpa arrived carrying her firstborn wrapped in a blanket…
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by Mary Phillips-Sandy For more than fifty years a synagogue has stood at the northeast corner of West End Avenue and West 100th Street in Manhattan. The synagogue is called Congregation Ansche Chesed, and in the summer of 1999 its roof became home to an…
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by John Haskel
by John Haskell I recently went to the show at the Noguchi Museum called "Best of Friends," an exhibition chronicling the collaborations between Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi, and what struck me wasn't the work itself, but the sense of idealism that their work was…
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by Michael Liss
by Michael Liss Clifford Chase’s Winkie, one of the most buzzed about books this summer, spins a fairy tale about a teddy bear willing himself to life only to be wrongly arrested as a terrorist mastermind. In fully realizing the character of Winkie, Chase examines…
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by Cheryl Burke Full disclosure: I have known Janice Erlbaum for over a decade. I first met her in the mid-nineties while she was performing with the all-female poetry group The Pussy Poets. One of the best writers on the spoken-word scene, Erlbaum stood out…
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by Suzanne Dottino
by Suzanne Dottino It was the hottest day in New York in over fifty years and the legendary Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, seemed right at home in the heat. His slight accent, ease and civility felt not just the byproduct of his…
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by Michael Liss
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Interviews
by Michael Liss Jay Ryan has risen as one of underground poster art's most prolific and talented artists. His hand-drawn, silkscreen posters have announced Chicago's top concerts for the past decade and his work has been featured in galleries across the U.S. and Europe. More…
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by Olena Jennings
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Interviews
by Olena Jennings This September, Impetus Press carted their irresistible fiction cross-country from the press’s birthplace, Iowa City, to NYC and KGB Bar. Among the readers was Jennifer Banash who started the press with Willy Blackmore. Their brainchild is a small press that offers what…
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by Michael Liss
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Interviews
By Michael Liss Nell Freudenberger's debut novel The Dissident explores the cultural collision of a famous Chinese artist/political activist and the Los Angeles family who hosts him during his artist's residency at their daughter's high school. The novel, which interweaves four points of view, was…
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by Ruchi Mital
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Interviews
by Ruchi Mital From the Philadelphia suburbs of his childhood to adolescence in the jazz haze of 1950s Paris to New York City, Steve Geng gained fame on the streets as "Record Steve." While he was mastering the art of boosting records and living the…
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by Olena Jennings
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Interviews
by Olena Jennings Martin Riker is the assistant director of Dalkey Archive Press. He and I met on an August night after a reading at the KGB Bar—I drank a Baltika while Riker spoke about his experiences at the St. Petersburg Literary Seminars. He presented…
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by Anne K. Yoder
and Colleen English
When I spoke with Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians of Melville House Press at their Hoboken office on the “Left Bank” as they fondly called it, in 2007, they had just won the Mariam Bass Award for creativity in independent publishing. They had also…
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by Susan Y. Chi
Kristin Pulkkinen, Publicity Director, Luke Gerwe, Assistant Managing Editor, and Richard Nash: (Photo by Susan Chi) On the eighth floor of 55 Washington Street in DUMBO, Richard Eoin Nash, Publisher of Soft Skull Press, fires off an email from his desk. The office is an…
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by Michael Liss
The highly anticipated second album from We Are Scientists, Brain Thrust Mastery, hit the shelves in the United States in mid-May after being available in the U.K and Europe since early spring. The Brooklyn-based band’s first album, With Love and Squalor, earned great reviews and…
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by Suzanne Dottino
Not a Sunday night goes by when I don't think of Ken Foster. As I stand behind the duct-taped podium wedged in the corner of the KGB Bar, just as I am about to introduce the authors, I think: Would he approve of my selection?…
read »
By Aaron Hamburger Depending on your point of view, Tel Aviv-based writer Etgar Keret is a charming prankster or a spoiled brat. To his legions of avid fans, Keret's wry, frank, and often surreal vignettes reflect a distinctly contemporary sensibility. To his detractors, Keret's seeming…
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by Michael Liss
by Michael Liss Andrew Berends' powerful documentary The Blood of My Brother tells the story of the war in Iraq from a perspective rarely seen in the U.S. – that of an Iraqi family grieving for its eldest son. After saving up for years in…
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by Suzanne Dottino
Got a writer . . . got a writer . . . Sometimes I feel like a junkie looking for a quick fix when I look at the KGB calendar and see that I need to book six months of authors to read for the…
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by Suzanne Dottino
I met Jhumpa Lahiri when she read from her novel, The Namesake , at KGB Bar as part of the Sunday Night Fiction Series along with Susan Choi (author of American Woman). Jhumpa arrived carrying her firstborn wrapped in a blanket followed by her husband…
read »
by Suzanne Dottino
It was the hottest day in New York in over fifty years and the legendary Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, seemed right at home in the heat. His slight accent, ease and civility felt not just the byproduct of his fine upbringing, but…
read »
by Susan Y. Chi
Susan Chi On the eighth floor of 55 Washington Street in DUMBO, Richard Eoin Nash, Publisher of Soft Skull Press, fires off an email from his desk. The office is an open, white-walled loft, and Richard’s desk is a cozy four-feet away from the door.…
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by Anna Andrade
Translated by Anna K. Andrade HALF PIPE, Luiz Roque Filho. Video Intervention , Centro Administrativo Fernando Ferrari . Porto Alegre. BRACNERImportant Book: Arabian Nights (2005 Portuguese Translation) Age Discovered: 26 Your First Thoughts: I am specifically interested in books and authors from very diverse fields;…
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by Joshua Cohen
Steve Erickson's many novels (Days Between Stations, Rubicon Beach, Tours of the Black Clock, Arc d'X, Amnesiascope, The Sea Came in at Midnight, Our Ecstatic Days) read as if written for the readership of other worlds- worlds not different from ours so much as parallel,…
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by Olena Jennings
...the act of translation itself should be subversive
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I was afraid of coming off like a fool, which is why I took notes in the first place, and why, probably I was invited to participate: comic relief
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by Ruchi Mital
Meeting with Steve Geng at the Moonstruck Diner in Chelsea, I am struck by how quickly he laughs at himself and the long silences his sister, Veronica, brings to our table as Steve remembers losing her. Thick as Thieves is Steve's memoir, and his tribute to Veronica.
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by Bess Lovejoy
There's something about the elegance of the human form that's quite awe-inspiring sometimes ... when you see a very beautiful person ... when you encounter beautiful, elegant speech, very beautifully formed ideas, very gracefully expressed thoughts, art. That falls apart too...
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