Ellen Datlow & Matthew Kressel (9/2022, Photo: Angus McIntyre)

Fantastic Fiction at KGB is a monthly speculative-fiction reading series held on the second Wednesday of every month at the famous KGB Bar in Manhattan, available as a podcast and on YouTube, hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. Admission is always free.

Some of our past readers: N.K. Jemisin, Joe Hill, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Scott Westerfeld, Kelly Link, China Miéville, Nancy Kress, Paul Tremblay, Jack McDevitt, Stewart O’Nan, Joyce Carol Oates, James Patrick Kelly, Barry N. Marlzberg, Samuel (Chip) Delany, Holly Black, Michael Swanwick, Kit Reed, Peter Straub, Andy Duncan, Richard Bowes, Catherynne M. Valente, Ellen Kushner, Jeff VanderMeer, Naomi Novik, Elizabeth Bear and a host of other talented authors.

History: Terry Bisson and Alice K. Turner started the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series in the late 1990s, attempting to bring together mainstream writers with writers of speculative fiction in order to show, in Alice Turner’s words, “that at a certain level they were plowing exactly the same field.” In the spring of 2000 editor Ellen Datlow took over for Alice K. Turner and in August 2002 Gavin J. Grant, publisher of Small Beer Press, stepped in for Bisson when he moved to California. Multiple-Nebula Award-nominated Author Matthew Kressel stepped in for Gavin in April of 2008.

Time & Place: Every second Wednesday of the month at 7pm at the KGB Bar (website): 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave) New York, NY 10003 map

Contact: Please read our F.A.Q. before emailing us. You may email us at [info] [at] [kgbfantasticfiction] [dot] [org].