KGB Bar

Jane Bowles’ sole and singular novel, Two Serious Ladies, published in 1943, is brilliant, surprising at every turn, and special in its unexpected dialogue and rare attitudes; it is like no other novel written before or since. But as it was Bowles’ only novel, she has not been taken up by the academy. How to teach a one-novel author? Even one whose only novel is a work of genius. So, it is up to us writers to carry her work, including her unique short stories, to new readers. Writers from Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, to Deborah Eisenberg have come under the distinctive spell of Jane Bowles. But she is not just a writer’s writer, though her name among many writers is sacred; she’s a writer for smart and sensitive readers.  The KGB Tribute to Jane Bowles honors this amazing writer for her immense contributions to the novel and to American literature. Jane Bowles’ writing proves that quality is more important than quantity, even in our supersized America. Please join Amy Hempel, Richard Foreman, Francine Prose, Michael Cunningham, Lydia Davis, Brian T. Edwards and Lynne Tillman in celebrating the ever-audacious Jane Bowles,
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Readers:
Michael Cunningham
Lydia Davis
Richard Foreman
Amy Hempel
Francine Prose
Brian T. Edwards
Lynne Tillman
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MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award & Pulitzer Prize), and Specimen Days. He lives in New York.
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LYDIA DAVIS has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection was Varieties of Disturbance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007. “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis”, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2009, contains all her stories to date.
BRIAN T. EDWARDS is a writer and cultural critic who has published essays in The Believer, McSweeney’s, and A Public Space.  He is the author of Morocco Bound: Disorienting America’s Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech Express (2005), which has two chapters on the work of Paul and Jane Bowles.  He knew Paul Bowles for the last five years of the author’s life, and conducted extensive, unpublished interviews with Bowles and his Moroccan circle.  He is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Northwestern University.
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RICHARD FOREMAN, Founder Director, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays both in New York City and abroad.  Five of his plays have received “OBIE” awards as best play of the year—and he has received five other “OBIE’S” for directing and for ‘sustained achievement’.  He has received the annual Literature award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a “Lifetime Achievement in the Theater” award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN Club Master American Dramatist Award, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and in 2004 was elected officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France.  His archives and work materials have recently been acquired by the Bobst Library at NYU.
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AMY HEMPEL was born in Chicago, Illinois. She is well known for her works in fiction and non-fiction. Her first story collection, Reason to Live, which won the Commonwealth Club of California Silver Medal. Amy is also the author of At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom and Tumble Home, and is the coeditor of the anthology, Unleashed: Poems by Writer’s Dogs. Her stories have appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s, The Quarterly, The Yale Review and several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. She also works as a contributing editor to Bomb Magazine
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FRANCINE PROSE is the author of many bestselling books of fiction, including A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the nonfiction New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. Her novel, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. Another novel, The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical of the same name. She lives in New York City.
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LYNNE TLLMAN is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. She is currently Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany and is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, one collection of essays, and two other nonfiction books.

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.

Suzanne Dottino/fiction curator,