KGB Bar

JJ Koczan (fiction), born in Parsippany, New Jersey, likes his metal slow, his garlic raw, his beer Belgian and his art tortured. He works as the Managing Editor of the alternative paper, The Aquarian Weekly, runs his own independent record label, The Maple Forum, and manages the website, TheObelisk.net.  He’s also the vocalist of the band Maegashira, who released their debut album in 2009.  He is currently a 2nd year fiction student at the Rutgers Newark MFA program. 

Rimas Uzgiris (poetry) grew up in upstate NY and received a BA in anthropology at UC-San Diego.  In search of cultures old and new, he lived in Lithuania for a year before earning a PhD in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His poetry has been published in Bridges and 322 Review, and is forthcoming in Lituanus.  He has a translation forthcoming in the Massachusetts Review.  He has also published his revised dissertation as a book: Desire, Meaning and Virtue: The Socratic Account of Poetry.

Nancy Toomey (fiction) is a second year MFA student at Rutgers. She has been a student of anthropology, a director of marketing communications, free-lance journalist, championship softball coach, mother of three daughters, and family black sheep.  In 2005, she published her first novel, From the Abuelas’ Window, a YA story about Pinochet’s Chile.  Her more recent work focuses on her Irish heritage and NJ roots.