KGB Bar

Helen Benedict’s most recent nonfiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq came out from Beacon Press in April 2009. Her play based on the book, The Lonely Soldier Monologues, was performed at The Theater for the New City and at La MaMa in 2009.Benedict’s other novels are The Opposite of Love, The Sailor’s Wife, Bad Angel, and A World Like This. Other articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Glamour, The Women’s Review of Books, and in many other magazines. She is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. She reads from her novel: The Edge of Eden

“Benedict offers an engaging, lush portrait of envy, desire, and the insatiable lure of the exotic and unknown.” (Booklist, Oct. 2009)
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Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus and two novels, The Ecstatic and Big Machine. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Whiting Writers’ Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, and the key to Southeast Queens. He was raised in Queens, New York. He reads from his novel: Big Machine
“Big Machine is like nothing I’ve ever read, incredibly human and alien at the same time. LaValle writes like Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with Edgar Allen Poe, but this is even more than that. He’s written the first great book of the next America.” —Mos Def

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,