KGB Bar

On May 9th at 7pm, KGB is proud to present a Tribute to Flannery O’Connor. Curated by Lynne Tillman and Matthew Sharpe, the event takes as its impetus Brad Gooch’s important biography, Flannery, A Life of Flannery O’Connor, published in 2009 and a Finalist for the NBCC. The tribute readers include authors Brad Gooch, Michael Cunningham, James Hannaham, and Samantha Gillison, as well as its co-curators, Sharpe and Tillman. 

Born in Georgia in 1925 (d. 1964), O’Connor is regularly designated as a great Southern writer. We claim her as a great and profound American writer. Her ingenuity and daring, startling choices and unique characters, her brave language, transcend regional designation. In fact, and interestingly, O’Connor attended the Iowa Writers Workshop at its beginning, in 1946, and can be said to be its most famous graduate—and the best argument for the value of that singular American invention, the MFA in creative writing.
O’Connor’s storytelling is as significant to American letters as writers such as Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, and William Faulkner. Her work is revelatory and astonishing, terrifying and funny, and we are happy and humbled to honor an honest-to-goodness American literary genius.

Readers:
Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD, FLESH AND BLOOD, THE HOURS, and SPECIMEN DAYS.  THE HOURS won the 1999 PEN Faulkner and Pulitzer prizes.  His latest novel, BY NIGHTFALL, will be published in October 2010.

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Samantha Gillison is the author of the novel The Undiscovered Country which was short-listed for the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum award and received a 2000 Mrs. Giles E. Whiting Writers award in Fiction. She received a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction to work on her second novel, The King of America. Gillison’s short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Open City, Descant, The Philadelphia City Paper, and is forthcoming in Playboy and the journal, Epiphany. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and lives in Brookly

Brad Gooch’s most recent book is Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is also the author of the acclaimed biography City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara; as well as Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America; a collection of poems, The Daily News; a story collection, Jailbait; three novels, Scary Kisses, The Golden Age of Promiscuity, and Zombie00; and two memoirs, Finding the Boyfriend Within and Dating the Greek Gods. The recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, he earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University and is a professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He lives in New York City.

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James Hannaham’s first novel, God Says No, published by McSweeney’s in 2009, was named an honor book by the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards. His stories have appeared in The Literary Review, Open City, Nerve, One Story, and several anthologies. His criticism and journalism have appeared in The Village Voice, Spin, Us, Out, and Salon.com, where he was once on staff, and have been reprinted in Best African American Essays 2009 and Best Sex Writing 2009. He teaches creative writing at the Pratt Institute and the New School.
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Matthew Sharpe’s novel You Were Wrong will be published in September. He is the author of Jamestown, The Sleeping Father, Nothing Is Terrible, and Stories from the Tube.

Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and critic.  Her fifth novel, AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY, was published by Soft Skull Press (2006). Her previous novels are HAUNTED HOUSES, MOTION SICKNESS, CAST IN DOUBT, and NO LEASE ON LIFE (1998), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  Tillman has published three nonfiction books, including an essay collection, THE BROAD PICTURE (1997) and THE VELVET YEARS: Warhol’s Factory 1965-67 (1995), based on photographs by Stephen Shore, and three story collections, most recently, THIS IS NOT IT, stories and novellas written in response to the work of 22 contemporary artists. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and is the fiction editor of Fence magazine.
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Fiction Director: Suzanne Dottino
Contact: Suzanne@kgbbar.com