Fantastic Fiction at KGB

Here’s the audio from this month’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series with Jacob Weisman & Ben Berman Ghan, January 8th, 2025. Both authors read from their work to a good crowd despite the freezing weather outside.

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Jacob Weisman is the publisher at Tachyon Publications, which he founded in 1995. He is a World Fantasy Award winner for the anthology The New Voices of Fantasy, which he co-edited with Peter S. Beagle. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Realms of Fantasy, The Louisville Courier-Journal, The Seattle Weekly, and The Cooper Point Journal.  Weisman’s first novel, Egyptian Motherlode co-authored with David Sandner, was recently published by Fairwood Press. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

Ben Berman Ghan is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary. His debut collection of fiction, What We See in the Smoke, was published in 2019, his novella Visitation Seeds was published in 2020, and his novel The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits was published with Buckrider Books in 2024. His prose, poetry, and essays have been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Filling Station Magazine, The Blasted Tree Publishing Co., Pinhole Poetry, and The Ancillary Review of Books.

Here’s the audio from this month’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB, with guests Sarah Pinsker & Yume Kitasei. Both authors read from their work to a good crowd, despite the pouring rain!

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A starred Booklist review called Sarah Pinsker’s latest, Haunt Sweet Home, “Fun, eerie, [and] unexpectedly beautiful…” She is the Hugo and Nebula winning author of the novels A Song For A New Day and We Are Satellites, plus the collections Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea and Lost Places, both published by Small Beer Press, and over sixty pieces of short fiction. She’s currently the Kratz Writer in Residence at Goucher College, and lives in Baltimore with her wife and two weird dogs.

Yume Kitasei is the author of The Deep Sky, The Stardust Grail, and Saltcrop (forthcoming in 2025). She is half Japanese and half American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. You can find more information about her at www.yumekitasei.com. She chirps occasionally @Yumewrites at Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky.

Here’s the audio from the November 13t, 2024 Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings with James Patrick Kelly & Teel James Glenn. James Patrick Kelly read from his forthcoming novella which will be in the Jan/Feb Asimov’s and Teel James Glenn read from his just published novel Not Born of Woman to a full, enthusiastic house.

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James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for his short fiction. He has also written five and half novels, a dozen or so plays and some embarrassing poetry. His column “On The Net” is a regular feature of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. He is an early adopter, a shade gardener, a cross-country skier, and an open water swimmer, so it helps that he lives on a lake in New Hampshire. KGB is one of his favorite places to read and this will be his eighth visit to Fantastic Fiction since 2000. His new novella, Moon and Mars, will be out from Asimov’s in the January/February issue.

Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times–on stage and screen, for forty-plus years as a stuntman, swordmaster, storyteller, book illustrator, bodyguard, actor, and haunted house barker. He has dozens of novels and stories published in over two hundred magazines including Weird Tales, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. His novel A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure won best novel 2021 in the Pulp Factory Award. He can be found at in wild Weehawken NJ and at TheUrbanSwashbuckler.com.

Here;s the audio from the Oct 9th, 2024 Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading with guests Sarah Langan and David Leo Rice.

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Sarah Langan’s most recent novels are A Better World, which the Los Angeles Times calls: “A high-water mark in the career of a novelist who’s already won three Bram Stoker Awards,” and Good Neighbors (a Newsweek, Irish Times, and Lit Reactor best book of the year). Her previous novels are The Keeper, The Missing, and Audrey’s Door. She has an MFA from Columbia University, an MS in Environmental Health Science/Toxicology from NYU, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the writer/director JT Petty, their two daughters, and two maniac rabbits.

David Leo Rice was born and raised in Northampton, MA, and now resides in Brooklyn. His novels include Angel House, The New House, the Dodge City Trilogy, and The Berlin Wall, named the “#7 Best Indie Book of the 21st Century so far” in Genrepunk Magazine. His first collection, Drifter, was named one of the “10 Must-Read Books of 2021” in the Southwest Review, and his second, The Squimbop Condition, will be out next year. He’s also the co-editor of Children of the New Flesh, an anthology of essays, interviews, and stories responding to the work of David Cronenberg.

Here is the audio from September’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, recorded live at the KGB Bar on Sept 11th, 2024, with guests Alaya Dawn Johnson & Sarah Beth Durst.

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Alaya Dawn Johnson is the author of Trouble the Saints, winner of the World Fantasy Award; Reconstruction, her debut short story collection; and The Library of Broken Worlds, recent winner of the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People. Alaya has lived in Mexico for the last decade, where she’s sung in a blues band, gotten her master’s degree, produced a documentary, written novels, fooled around and fell in love. She and her filmmaker partner can normally be found in rural Oaxaca on a haunted mountaintop, where they have half a house, seven dogs and a mare.

Sarah Beth Durst is the New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-five books for adults, teens, and kids, including cozy fantasy The Spellshop. She’s been awarded an American Library Association Alex Award, as well as a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Several of her books have been optioned for film/television, and her novel Drink Slay Love was made into a TV movie and was a question on Jeopardy! She lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat. Visit her at sarahbethdurst.com.

Here’s the audio from the August 14, 2024 Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, with guests Christopher Rowe & James Chambers and guest co-host Mercurio D. Rivera. 

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Christopher Rowe was born in Kentucky and lives there still. Neither of these facts are likely to change. He has been a professional writer of speculative fiction since before the turn of the millennium. His stories and books have been reprinted and translated around the world, and have been finalists for every major award in the field, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Theodore Sturgeon awards. He is the author of one of the most well-regarded collections of recent years, Telling the Map (Small Beer Press), and of two critically acclaimed novellas, These Prisoning Hills and The Navigating Fox (Tordotcom Publishing). He likes golden retrievers, good food, and giant robots. He probably watches more professional bicycle races than you do, but who knows?

James Chambers is a Bram Stoker Award and Scribe Award-winning author. He is the author of A Bright and Beautiful Eternal World, On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road; the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice, the novellas, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God and Three Chords of Chaos, and the original graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and A New York State of Fright as well as Where the Silent Ones Watch, forthcoming from Hippocampus Press.

Here’s the audio from the July 10, 2024 Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, with guests Nat Cassidy & A.T. Sayre. Hot night, hot crowd, hot readings!

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Nat Cassidy’s horror novels Mary and Nestlings were featured on best-of lists from Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, the NY Public Library, and more, and he was named one of the “writers shaping horror’s next golden age” by Esquire. His award-winning horror plays have been produced across NYC and the country, including at the Kennedy Center. You’ve also maybe seen Nat guest-starring on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Bull, Quantico, FBI, and others … but that’s a topic for a different bio. His next novel with Tor Nightfire, When the Wolf Comes Home, hits shelves in April 2025. His website is: www.natcassidy.com.

A.T. Sayre has been writing in some form or other ever since he was ten years old. His work has appeared in The Cosmic Background, Aurealis, Haven Speculative, and most notably in Analog Magazine, where his debut novel The Last Days of Good People, appears in the current issue. His first short story collection, Signals in The Static, was published this spring by Lethe Press. More info on these and his other works can be found at www.atsayre.com/fiction. Born in Kansas City, raised in New Hampshire, he lives in Brooklyn and likes to read in coffeehouses.

The following audio was recorded live at the KGB Bar on June 12, 2024, with guests Grady Hendrix & Bracken MacLeod.

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Grady Hendrix is the New York Times-bestselling author of How To Sell a Haunted House, The Final Girl Support Group, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and many more. His history of the horror paperback boom of the ’70s and ’80s, Paperbacks from Hell, won the Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction. His books have been translated into 23 languages and sold over a million copies, which means he is guaranteed a seat on the space ark when the earth becomes uninhabitable. You can learn more useless facts about him at www.gradyhendrix.com.

Bracken MacLeod is a Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and two-time Splatterpunk Award finalist and the author of several books including Closing Costs and 13 Views of the Suicide Woods, which the New York Times Book Review called, “Superb,” though he imagines the reviewer pronouncing that, “supOIB.” Before devoting himself to full-time writing, he’s survived car crashes, a near drowning, being shot at, a parachute malfunction, and the bar exam. So far, the only incident that has resulted in persistent nightmares is the bar exam. So, please don’t mention it.

The following audio was recorded live at the KGB Bar on May 8, 2024, with guests John Wiswell & Anya Johanna DeNiro.

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John Wiswell’s novel Someone You Can Build A Nest In was published by DAW Books in April and received starred reviews in Library Journal and BookPage, and was named one of the Best of the Best in SFF for 2024 by Ingram. His short fiction has won the Nebula Award and Locus Award, and been a finalist for the Hugo, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His fiction has been translated into ten languages. He teaches for Clarion West and for the Rambo Academy. More about him can be found at https://linktr.ee/johnwiswell.

Anya Johanna DeNiro is the author of the short novel OKPsyche from Small Beer Press and City of a Thousand Feelings from Aqueduct Press, which was on the Honor Roll for the Otherwise Award. She has also been a finalist for the Sturgeon Award and the Crawford Award, and shortlisted for the O. Henry Award. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The following audio was recorded live at the KGB Bar on April 10, 2024, with guests Robert Levy & Jennifer Marie Brissett.

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Robert Levy’s novel The Glittering World was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Lambda Literary Award. His collection No One Dies from Love: Dark Tales of Loss and Longing was published last year by Worde Horde and includes stories from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare, Black Static, The Dark, The Best Horror of the Year, and The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction. Trained as a forensic psychologist, he teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and can be found at TheRobertLevy.com.

Jennifer Marie Brissett is the author of Destroyer of Light, which received a starred Kirkus Review and was on its list of Best Fiction of the Year. She is also the author of Elysium, which won The Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation and was a finalist for the Locus and Tiptree Awards. And once a long time ago she owned and operated an independent bookstore in Brooklyn. She lives in Manhattan where she is currently working on her next novel Daughters of the Night. Find her via her website at www.jennbrissett.com