KGB Bar

Denis Woychuk is the founder of the KGB Bar and its world-class literary series, which he began in 1994 with his friend, the novelist, Melvin Bukiet (read history). He is also the founder of the Kraine Theater (1984) and The Red Room performance space (1992). Denis is the author of Attorney for the Damned: A Lawyers Life with the Criminally Insane (The Free Press, New York, 1996) as well as two books for children. He is currently working on his second musical based of his experiences as an attorney for maximum-security mental patients. Denis now lives in Manhattan, but at heart he's still old-school Brooklyn. To contact Denis e-mail: .

Suzanne Dottino received her MFA in writing (nonfiction) from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Espous, Heeb, The Bloomsbury Review Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Review, Portable Muse, AAA Worldwide . Her plays have been produced at The Culture Project, Artists of Tomorrow Festival and was a finalist in the Samuel French Short Play Competition 2005. She is the Literary Curator for Sunday Night Fiction Series at KGB Bar. To contact Suzanne e-mail: .

Deborah Landau’s collection of poems, Orchidelirium, a National Poetry Series finalist, won the 2003 Anhinga Prize for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared widely, and she has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. She co-curates the KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series in New York City, where she is Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of The New School Writing Program.

Matthew Zapruder is a widely published poet and translator, as well as the founder and Editor in Chief of the acclaimed poetry publishing house Verse Press (now Wave Books). His first book of poetry, American Linden, was the winner of the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize, and came out in 2002. His second collection, The Pajamaist, will be published by Copper Canyon and is forthcoming in 2006. Zapruder's poems have appeared in many literary magazines and journals, including The Boston Review, Fence, Bomb, McSweeney's, Jubilat, Conduit, Harvard Review, The New Republic and The New Yorker. He is also the co-translator of Secret Weapon, the final collection by the late Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu. Zapruder teaches creative writing in the MFA Writing Program at the New School in New York City, where he is the co-curator of the KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series. He also teaches as a member of the permanent faculty of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Catherine Foulkrod is a freelance editor and writer living in Brooklyn, and the Associate Editor of Ballyhoo Stories. She holds a BA in Art Semiotics and Creative Writing from Brown University, and is a persnikkety little girl. To contact Catherine e-mail: .

Kendra Sullivan lives in Brooklyn . She studied painting at NYU, where she received the Thomas Wolfe Prize for Poetry. She's worked at Poets House, Apex Art, Archipelago Books, Pequod, and The Center for Book Arts. Last summer she taught arts and crafts in Central America. She'd like to go back. Kendra is also a monthly columnist for KGB BAR LIT. To contact Kendra e-mail: .

Anne K. Yoder is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. She is the associate books editor at PopMatters, and moonlights as a pharmacist in the West Village. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, BlackBook, and PopMatters. To contact Anne e-mail: .

Erika Imberti holds a B.A. in Journalism and English Literature from Rutgers and is an assistant editor for an illustrated books publisher. She is a voracious photographer, travels on a whim, and was once awarded a trip to Switzerland for her writing. To contact Erika e-mail: .

Melissa Kirsch is the author of The Girl's Guide to Absolutely Everything (Workman, 2006). Her poetry has been published in such journals as Northwest Review, Fence, Nerve, Indiana Review, Drunken Boat and in the insomnia anthology, Acquainted With the Night (Columbia University Press, 1999). She has received fellowships from the Camargo Foundation and the Château de La Napoule in France and the Fundación Valparaíso in Spain. She lives one block from KGB.

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Carly Sachs teaches creative writing at George Washington University. Her first collection of poems, the steam sequence won the 2006 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Book Prize and will be published in August 2006. She is the founder and co-curator of the Burlesque Poetry Hour at Bar Rouge in Washington, D.C. 

Kendra Sullivan lives in Brooklyn. She studied painting at NYU, where she received the Thomas Wolfe Prize for Poetry. She's worked at Poets House, Apex Art, Archipelago Books, Pequod, and The Center for Book Arts. Last summer she taught arts and crafts in Central America. She'd like to go back. Kendra is also a monthly columnist for KGB BAR LIT. To contact Kendra e-mail: . 

Stephen Byler was born in Lancaster, PA. His first collection of fiction, Searching for Intruders, was a New York Times Notable book.

Brendan McCall, born in San Francisco, is a director and choreographer and has been performing internationally since 1994. He teaches at the Yale School of Drama (CT) and the New School for Drama (NY), and is currently working on his first novel.

Susan Y. Chi was born in Taichung and grew up in East L.A. Her fiction has been published in BOMB, Small Spiral Notebook, and other literary journals. She’s received awards and fellowships from Glimmer Train, Indiana Review, Inkwell, Vermont Studio Center, and SLS -St. Petersburg, Russia. Before co-founding KGB BAR LIT with Denis and Suzanne, Susan was an editorial associate at Fiction Magazine. And, in a previous life, Susan was a researcher in the fields of molecular anthropology and experimental medicine at Columbia University and the Scripps Research Institute. Her scientific publications can be found in the American Journal of Human Genetics and the Journal of Virology. To contact Susan e-mail: .

Lisa Selin Davis is the author of the novel Belly, and a freelance writer in New York. Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times, Preservation, Metropolis, Marie Claire and many other publications, and her fiction and prose poems have been published in Swink, Hayden's Ferry Review, West Branch and Small Spiral Notebook, among others.

Kelly McMasters is a writer in New York. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University and Mediabistro.com, and is co-director of the KGB Nonfiction reading series in the East Village. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Domino, Metropolis, Elle Décor, Newsday, MrBellersNeighborhood, and Time Out NY, among others, and she is at work on her nonfiction book, SHIRLEY, to be published in March 2008.

Bess Lovejoy is the former editor of many things, including the Vancouver, BC alt weekly Terminal City. She now lives in New York City and works on the American version of Schott's Almanac for Bloomsbury USA.

Michael Liss works a day job, does business development and film programming for the Vail Film Festival and sometimes pretends he's writing a novel. He leaves the country as often as possible and the rest of the time is in New York.

Alana Newhouse is the arts and culture editor at the Forward newspaper. 

Jennifer Bassett is a writer living in New York. She received a B.A. from Columbia University and a M.A. from NYU. She works in book publishing, is associate editor for the literary magazine, Swink, and plays keyboard in the and The Eliza Battle.

Elizabeth Cho received her BA in business and MA in art & archaeology from Brown University. An ad executive by day, art consultant by night, she brings together her starving artist friends with her yuppie friends in a modern day salon way. She assists young artists in the beginning of their careers while helping young collectors develop individual tastes in art. Her other great love in life is writing. Her short stories have been published on 5_trope and other literary magazines. Please visit her website Au Currant where she discusses what is au courant in art, culture, and literature. To contact Elizabeth e-mail:echo@kgbbar.com.

James McCloskey is an author and co-founder of the Street to Home Initiative, a non-profit that works with the chronically homeless. His fiction and journalism have appeared in New Stone Circle, The Normal College Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. He lives in Brooklyn.

Tod Crouch is author of the novels The Night Watchman, Common People, Romanticide, Victors, Cutting Teeth and The Anna Log Children’s Series.  He received a Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia College for Photography in 2001 after directing and writing two theatrical productions, Undying Loyalty and Of course: a Series of One Acts. before finishing five other plays.  He Co-Curates at Papa B’s Studio in Brooklyn and occasionally volunteers for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.  He makes most of his money as a bouncer in a lesbian bar.  Tod tends to be a cheery lad.  If you were to be Tod’s friend, he would want you to know that he’ll talk to anyone about anything anytime, but will probably forget your name and hates answering phones.  The book he wish he wrote is Herman Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game”.  His favorite word is “surprise”.  His least favorite word is “but”.  He wants to be remembered as “a neat guy to meet.” His six word epitaph is “He had an amazing run, thankfully.” He is from Illinois and has lived in New York for five years. 

Jonathan Lachance holds a B.A . in English and a masters degree in urban planning, but he's all about fiction. He recently completed a first novel, Heirs of Eminence, and is hard at work on his second. He has published articles on urban planning in Progressive Planner magazine. When he's not glassy-eyed in front of a computer, there's a good chance he's reading something by Murakami or Chandler or practicing Yiddish with his bubbe. He lives in Brooklyn. Contact . 

Olena Jennings completed her MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Alberta. There she worked on translations from Ukrainian of Natalka Bilotserkivets' poetry, which were published in Chelsea and Poetry International Web. Her translation of Oleksiy Koshel's collection of poetry A Chapel for Angels was published in Ukraine. She completed her MFA at Columbia University. She is working on a novel. To contact Olena e-mail: .

Ruchi Mital lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she pursues interests in documenting, the dance, discoball theories, and various epic adventures. She is currently at work on a documentary about the opening of one of the first modern hospitals in the Congo in over 40 years. You can reach her at .

Mookyung Sohn is a Studio Art major at NYU. She loves parakeets, NYC, music, and art. www.geocities.com/mksportfolio

Anya Yurchyshyn is a candidate for an MFA in fiction at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Sherbert, Wednesday and Lemonade Magazine.

Jamila Khanom Allidina is an intern at KGB Bar Lit, a student at Columbia University's School of the Arts, and wishes she had cable.

Anne Pelletier is at work on a collection of short stories, Meat and Meat Byproducts. She is a student in the MFA program in fiction writing at Columbia University. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Sleepingfish and The Brooklyn Rail.

Ryan Max is an intern at KGB BAR LIT and an undergraduate student at NYU.

Fiction

Poetry

Poetry

Teacher, cartoonist, animator, Tom Hart is creator of Hutch Owen graphic novels and comic strips, critically acclaimed by The Comics Journal, Time.com, Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. 

Kevin T. S. Tang recently graduated Dartmouth College with an honors degree in English. At Dartmouth, Kevin was prose editor of the campus literary magazine and won multiple writing awards for his fiction thesis. He is a published magazine travel & culture writer in his hometown, Taipei, Taiwan. Mostly he likes to write about urban subcultures and the things young people do to entertain themselves in the city.