Podcast
Fantastic Fiction at KGB
Hosted by Matthew Kressel · EN
Fantastic Fiction at KGB is a monthly speculative fiction reading series held at the famous KGB bar in NYC, and hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. Some of our past readers include N.K. Jemisin, Joe Hill, Jeffrey Ford, Scott Westerfeld, Kelly Link, China Miéville, Nancy Kress, Paul Tremblay, Joyce Carol Oates, Samuel R. Delany, Holly Black, Michael Swanwick, Kit Reed, Peter Straub, Catherynne M. Valente, Jeff VanderMeer, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear and many other talented authors.
16episodes
Episodes
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Audio from Aug 13th, with Cassandra Khaw & Debra K. Every
Sep 1400:48:39Tap to summarizeHere’s the audio from the August 13th reading with guests Cassandra Khaw & Debra K. Every, recorded live at the KGB Bar, guest hosted by Amy Goldschlager & Mercurio D. Rivera. We need your help to stay funded! Support the reading series by clicking here! Cassandra Khaw Cassandra Khaw is the USA Today bestselling and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Library at Hellebore, Nothing But Blackened Teeth, The Salt Grows Heavy, Breakable Things, and coauthor of The Dead Take the A Train with Richard Kadrey. Khaw is also an award-winning game writer. & Debra K. Every Debra K. Every is an author of horror, thrillers, and stories with twisted perspectives. Her 2024 horror debut, Deena Undone, has won multiple awards, most notably an American Fiction Award, a Storytrade Book Award, and a Page Turner Award. A Spanish edition will be released in 2025. Her short stories have been published by Hippocampus Press, Fairfield Scribes, Etched Onyx, Fractured Lit, and Querencia Press.
Transcribe →Audio from July 9th, with John Kessel & Caitlin Rozakis
Jul 30, 202500:51:43Tap to summarizeHere’s the audio from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading, with John Kessel & Caitlin Rozakis, recorded on July 9th, 2025, live at the KGB Bar. We need your help to stay funded! Support the reading series by clicking here! John Kessel John Kessel’s most recent books are the collection The Presidential Papers, in PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series, and the career retrospective The Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel from Subterranean Press. His novels include The Moon and the Other and Pride and Prometheus. His fiction has twice received the Nebula Award, in addition to the Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Otherwise awards. At NC State University he taught fiction writing and co-founded the Sycamore Hill Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Raleigh with the obligatory three cats and the absolutely non-obligatory spouse, author Therese Anne Fowler. & Caitlin Rozakis New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Rozakis writes fantasy with a satirical twist and a cozy heart. Her most recent novel is The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association. Her previous book, Dreadful, but turned out not to be dreadful at all. Her contemporary romance novella Leah’s Perfect Christmas, written as Catherine Beck, was adapted as the Hallmark Channel Original Movie Leah’s Perfect Gift. She lives in Jersey City with her husband and son.
Transcribe →Audio from Jun 11th, with Christopher Barzak & David Surface
Jun 22, 202500:57:09Tap to summarizeHere’s the audio from the June 11th, 2025 Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading with guests Christopher Barzak & David Surface. Both read from their work to a full house. We need your help to stay funded! Support the reading series by clicking here! Christopher Barzak Christopher Barzak’s most recent book is the novella, A Voice Calling. He is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel One for Sorrow which was made into the Sundance feature film Jamie Marks is Dead. His novel, Wonders of the Invisible World, received the Stonewall Honor from the American Library Association, was selected for inclusion on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of books for LGBTQ welcoming school libraries, and included in CNN’s 2024 Pride Recommend Reading list. He is also the author of Before and Afterlives, which won Best Collection in the 2013 Shirley Jackson Awards. & David Surface David Surface is the author of the collections Terrible Things from Black Shuck Books and These Things That Walk Behind Me from Lethe Press. David and co-author Julia Rust have written the novels Angel Falls which was winner of the 2025 Whippoorwill Book Award, and Saving Thornwood from Haverhill HousePublishing’s YAP Books. David is also creator of the newsletter Strange Little Stories which explores the line between truth and fiction by offering writers the chance to discuss and write about the strange and inexplicable things that have happened to them.
Transcribe →Audio from May 14th, with Daryl Gregory & Carol Gyzander
May 24, 202500:52:06Tap to summarizeHere’s the audio from the May 14th reading with Daryl Gregory & Carol Gyzander, recorded live at the KGB Bar on May 14th, 2025, 7pm ET. We need your help to stay funded! Support the reading series by clicking here! Daryl Gregory Daryl Gregory is a Seattle writer whose latest novel is When We Were Real, which Kirkus in a starred review called “a marvel.” His books and short stories have been translated into a dozen languages and have won multiple awards, including the World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Crawford awards, and have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, and other awards. His ten other books include the novels Revelator and Spoonbenders, the novellas The Album of Dr. Moreau and We Are All Completely Fine, and the collection Unpossible and Other Stories. He also teaches writing and is a regular instructor at the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop & Carol Gyzander Carol Gyzander is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee who writes and edits horror, weird fiction, and science fiction—with strong women in twisted tales that touch your heart. She has stories in Weird Tales 367, Weird House Magazine, Under Twin Suns, and numerous other publications. Carol edited and contributed to the Stoker-nominated Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Publishing), including her poem “Bobblehead,” which is nominated for a Rhysling Award. She’s Co-Chair of HWA NY Chapter and co-host of their Galactic Terrors online reading series. Follow her on Instagram @carolgyzander.
Transcribe →Audio from April 9, with Andrea Hairston & Ursula Whitcher
Apr 27, 202500:49:44Tap to summarizeThe following audio was recorded live at the KGB Bar on April 9th, 2025, with guests Andrea Hairston & Ursula Whitcher. We need your help to stay funded! Support the reading series by clicking here! Andrea Hairston Novelist, Andrea Hairston ran away from the physics lab to the theatre as a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since. Novels: Archangels of Funk; Will Do Magic For Small Change, a NYT, (the latter an Editor’s pick & finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, & Otherwise Awards); Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the Otherwise & Carl Brandon Award; Master of Poisons was on the Kirkus Review’s Best SF&F of 2020; and Mindscape, coming from Tordotcom, August, 2025. & Ursula Whitcher Ursula Whitcher is a writer, poet, and mathematician whose collection of interwoven short stories, North Continent Ribbon, is published by Neon Hemlock Press. Ursula lives in Michigan with a spouse who works on high-voltage outer space experiments and two cats who work on lounging by heating vents. Look for more of Ursula’s writing in magazines such as Asimov’s and Analog or in the American Mathematics Society‘s Feature Column
Transcribe →Audio from Oct 18th with James Patrick Kelly & Jennifer Marie Brissett
Oct 26, 2017Tap to summarizeThe following audio was recorded live at the KGB bar on October 18, 2017, with guests James Patrick Kelly & Jennifer Marie Brissett. Thanks as always to Gordon Linzner for providing the audio recording. James Patrick Kelly James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. His most recent publications are the novel Mother Go, an audiobook original from Audible and the career retrospective Masters of Science Fiction: James Patrick Kelly from Centipede Press. Forthcoming in November are the premier of his stage play Grouped, at the Paragon Science Fiction Play Festival in Chicago and in February a new story collection from Prime, The Promise of Space. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. & Jennifer Marie Brissett Jennifer Marie Brissett is the author of Elysium. She has been shortlisted for the Locus Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the storySouth Million Writers Award, and has won the Philip K. Dick Special Citation. Her short stories can be found in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Lightspeed, Uncanny, The Future Fire, APB: Artists against Police Brutality, and other publications. And once in her life, a long time ago and for three and a half years, she owned and operated a Brooklyn indie bookstore called Indigo Café & Books. She is currently on the faculty at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop where she teaches Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing.
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