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.

Here’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.

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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.

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.

Here’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.

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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 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.

Here’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.

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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 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.

The following audio was recorded live at the KGB Bar on April 9th, 2025, with guests Andrea Hairston & Ursula Whitcher.

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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 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

The following audio was recorded on March 12th, 2025, with guests Jedediah Berry & Victoria Dalpe.

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Jedediah Berry’s latest novel, The Naming Song, was described in a starred Library Journal review as “a wonderfully odd ode to language, story, and family.” His first book, The Manual of Detection, won the Crawford Award and the Hammett Prize, and was adapted for broadcast by BBC Radio 4. He is the author of numerous games and interactive works, including a story in cards, The Family Arcana, and the Ennie Award-winning RPG setting The Valley of Flowers (co-written with Andrew McAlpine). He lives in Western Massachusetts with his partner Emily Houk, with whom he runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction in unusual formats.

Victoria Dalpe is a Providence-based horror writer and painter. She has published over forty-five short stories in various collections, the gothic horror novel Parasite Life and the short story collection Les Femme Grotesques. “Dalpe’s horror stories are equal parts intriguing, compelling, and appropriately macabre,”—Rue Morgue. Book one of her dark horror fantasy series Selene Shade: Resurrectionist for Hire was released September of 2024 by Clash Books. Book two in the trilogy, Loving the Dead will be out this fall. Dalpe was also a producer on the drag queen slasher film Death Drop Gorgeous. For upcoming events follow her on Instagram at victorialdalpe