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: kgbbar@rcn.com.

Susan Y. Chi was born in Taichung and grew up in East L.A. Her fiction has been published in BOMB, Small Spiral Notebook, NYFA Current, 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: susan@kgbbar.com.

Senior Editor

Suzanne Dottino received her MFA in writing (nonfiction) from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Heeb, Esopus, Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Review, Portable Muse, AAA Worldwide and other literary journals. 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 Director for Sunday Night Fiction Series at KGB Bar and the editor of the forthcoming KGB Bar Fiction Anthology. To contact Suzanne e-mail: suzanne@kgbbar.com.

Poetry Editors

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.

Editor at Large

Copyeditor

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: kendra@kgbbar.com.

Books Editor

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: anne@kgbbbar.com.

Columns Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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: erika@kgbbar.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Columnists

My Secret Library:

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.

Poetry Roadtrip:

City Grid:

Here, There, and Nowhere:

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

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.

Editorial Assistants

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: kgbbarlit@kgbbar.com.

Interns

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.

Literary Advisors

Melvin Jules Bukiet, Fiction

David Lehman, Poetry

Star Black, Poetry