Here’s the audio from the October 8th, 2025 Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading with guests Leanna Renee Hieber & Shveta Thakrar. (Due to a technical glitch, the audio in this recording is overmodulated in some spots; we apologize for this and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen next time!)

Leanna Renee Hieber is a professional actress, playwright, tour guide, and award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction for Tor, Kensington and more. A Haunted History of Invisible Women was a Stoker Award Non-Fiction Finalist and America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction was just released. A 3-time Prism award winner for her Gothic Strangely Beautiful saga and a Daphne du Maurier finalist for Darker Still, Leanna’s stories and essays have been featured in notable anthologies and magazines. Featured on TV shows like Mysteries at the Museum discussing Victorian Spiritualism, she works for NYC’s Boroughs of the Dead and tells ghost stories nationwide.

Shveta Thakrar is a part-time nagini and full-time believer in magic. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Enchanted Living, Uncanny Magazine, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, and Toil & Trouble. Her debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, was a finalist for the 2021 Andre Norton Nebula Award, and her second and third novels, The Dream Runners and Divining the Leaves, take place in the same universe. Her adult fantasy novella, Into the Moon Garden, is available as an Audible Original audiobook. When not writing, Shveta crafts, reads, daydreams, travels, bakes, and occasionally plays her harp.

Here’s the audio from the September 10th, 2025 Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series with guests Fran Wilde & Shiva Kumar. Both read from their work to a full house.

Fran Wilde is a two-time Nebula Award-winner, a Best of NPR author, and finalist for multiple Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. Her most recent books include A Catalog of Storms, collected short fiction (Fairwood Press, August 2025) and the speculative heist novel A Philosophy of Thieves (Erewhon Books, October 2025). Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny Magazine, and multiple years’ best anthologies.

Fran is also Co-Editor in Chief for The Sunday Morning Transport with Julian Yap and writes nonfiction for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, and Tor.com.

Shiva Kumar is the author of the South Asian mythology inspired science fiction fantasy trilogy, The Lanka Chronicles, comprised of An Awakening, A New Reality, and Path of Destiny. As a screenwriter, Kumar has won numerous awards and best screenplay at the Long Island Film Festival for Journey to Babylon.

Kumar is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker with several films on PBS, BBC, and Amazon Prime. As an actor he has appeared in several network shows such as Madam Secretary, Law & Order SVU, FBI-Most Wanted, and Quantico.

Here’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.

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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 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.