KGB Bar

Austin Ratner is author of The Jump Artist, which Charles Baxter described as “a beautifully scrupulous, intricately detailed novel about joy and despair, anti-Semitism and assimilation.” It was recently named one of ten promising debuts of 2009 by Publishers’ Weekly and is based on the true story of renowned photographer Philippe Halsman. Austin’s short fiction has been honored with The Missouri Review fiction prize, among others. He attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and before turning to writing he received his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is co-author of the textbook Concepts in Medical Physiology, which is used at Harvard Medical School and elsewhere.

David Womack’s articles have appeared in The Guardian, Salon.com, Metropolis, Print, and Cabinet magazine and his essays have been included in numerous collections. David is currently at work on his first book, an account of his experiences living in a small village in Indonesia. David was a Darmasiswa fellow in Indonesian literature at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta; he has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Virginia.