KGB Bar Shopping Fiction Anthology Featuring Stories by Lethem, Saunders, Ames

Leon Neyfakh — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:45:44 -0400

Storied East Village literary haunt KGB Bar is shopping a new paperback fiction anthology to publishers this week, called The Greatest Stories Ever Read, according to literary agent Peter Steinberg, who is representing the book to publishers. The anthology, billed as "a greatest hits collection" of writing that has been read at KGB over the course of its 15-year history, will feature short works by Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders, Jonathan Ames, Norman Rush, Sam Lipsyte, and Daniel Handler. Francine Prose and Chuck Palahniuk have also agreed to contribute to the book once a contract has been signed.

The stories will be accompanied by brief testimonials from the authors about their experience reading at KGB, according to Mr. Steinberg.

The Greatest Stories Ever Read—edited by Suzanne Dottino, the organizer of the KGB Bar's Sunday Night Fiction Series—will be KGB's fifth anthology to date. (The last one, On the Rocks, came out in 2002.)

The anthology is the second book Mr. Steinberg will have shopped to publishers since he split from the Regal Literary agency this fall and started his own eponymous shop. The first was novelist Keith Donohue's Angels of Destruction, which Mr. Steinberg sold to Crown as part of a two-book deal worth about $1.3 million dollars.

Here's the full list of stories currently slated to be included in the new anthology:

Jonathan Lethem - Men and Cartoons

Norman Rush - Whites

Daniel Alarcon - Republica and Grau

Sam Lipyste - HomeLand

Alicia Erian - The Prison Wife

John Haskell - I Am Not Jackson Pollack

Tom Bissell - God Lives in St. Petersburg

George Saunders - CommComm

Amanda Fillipacchi - Love Creeps

Suki Kim - The Interpreter

Paul LaFarge - Phlogistan

Jonathan Ames - The Extra Man

Observer » KGB Bar Shopping Fiction Anthology Featuring Stories by Lethem, Saunders, Ames

KGB Bar Shopping Fiction Anthology Featuring Stories by Lethem, Saunders, Ames