Live readings at KGB Bar (also Zoomed)

MWA New York’s reading series returns to the KGB Bar. Join these talented authors in person or online as the readings are broadcast live via Zoom.

Registration is required for the Zoom meeting (click).

Carole Bugge

Carole Bugge (C. E. Lawrence, Carole Lawrence, Elizabeth Blake) has too many pen names. She is the author of fifteen published novels, award-winning plays, musicals, poetry and short fiction. Her most recent thriller is the third Ian Hamilton historical thriller, Edinburgh Midnight, under the pen name Carole Lawrence. Death and Sensibility, her second Jane Austen Society Mystery, under the pen name Elizabeth Blake, hit the shelves August 10th. Cleopatra’s Dagger, a thriller set in New York’s Guilded Age, will be released in March of 2022. Her “Silent” series (Silent Screams and its sequels) follows NYPD profiler Lee Campbell in his pursuit of serial killers, and her Sherlock Holmes novels have been re-released by Titan Books. In another life, she was a professional actor, singer and improvisational comedian. A self-described science geek, she likes to hunt wild mushrooms, and enjoys playing Bach on the piano when no one is listening.
Website: CELawrence.com

Gary Cahill

Gary Cahill is a member of MWA-NY and Irish American Writers & Artists. His first written and published short fiction ran as a Black Mask selection in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Other work has been featured in print, e-pub, and audio with Pulp Empire, The First Line Literary Journal, the Big Pulp anthology The Kennedy Curse, volumes I, II, III and the print anthology from Plan B Magazine, a featured cover story in Mystery Weekly Magazine, and the ever-lovin’ Shotgun Honey, among others. He worked over 23 years at a music company in Hell’s Kitchen during the strife between the Irish gang the Westies and the Gambinos, and spent inordinate amounts of time at the midtown bar made famous in the HBO series The Deuce. He now works on staff at the Weehawken NJ Public Library. Pizza remains a passion.

Philip Cioffari

Philip Cioffari is the author of the novels: IF ANYONE ASKS, SAY I DIED FROM THE HEARTBREAKING BLUES; THE BRONX KILL; DARK ROAD, DEAD END; JESUSVILLE; CATHOLIC BOYS; and the short story collection, A HISTORY OF THINGS LOST OR BROKEN, which won the Tartt Fiction Prize, and the D. H. Lawrence award for fiction. His short stories have been published widely in commercial and literary magazines and anthologies, including North American Review, Playboy, Michigan Quarterly Review, Northwest Review, Florida Fiction, and Southern Humanities Review. He is a playwright member of the Actors Studio. He has written and directed for Off and Off-Off Broadway. His Indie feature film, which he wrote and directed, LOVE IN THE AGE OF DION, has won numerous awards, including Best Feature Film at the Long Island Int’l Film Expo, and Best Director at the NY Independent Film & Video Festival. He is Professor of English, a member of the MFA faculty, and director of the Performing and Literary Arts Honors Program, at William Paterson University. www.philipcioffari.com

Andrea Clark

Andrea has contributed to several collections no one has heard of, among them: Book: The Sequel (The Perseus Book Group), and I Remember When Mom: (Andrews McMeel) and wrote a retranslation of E.T.A. Hoffman’s Nutcracker published by Alfred A. Knopf. She has an AB from Smith College where she studied writing with Elizabeth Hardwick who scared her to death. After college, Andrea worked briefly at The New Yorker as a typist, where she kept hearing “Can anyone read Pauline Kael’s handwriting?” She analyzed scripts for producer David Susskind at MGM in New York. She has an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her thesis film, “My Divorce,” won a 1996 Academy Award in the Student Film Category. She’s had the great good fortune to study mystery writing with Hallie Ephron at the Yale Writers’ Workshop. She lives in New York City with her husband, Matthew.

Carl Filbrich

Carl Filbrich enjoyed careers as an instructor and editor before he began writing mysteries. His latest novel, No One’s Daughter, will be published by Level Best Books in November.

James McCrone

James McCrone is the author of the Faithless Elector Series novels—Faithless Elector, Dark Network, and Emergency Powers—“taut” and “gripping” political thrillers (Kirkus) about a stolen presidency. His work, “Numbers Don’t Lie” appeared in the 2020 short-story anthology Low Down Dirty Vote, vol. 2, and his short story “Ultimatum Games” will appear in Rock and a Hard Place next month. His next book, working title Bastard Verdict, is a noir political thriller set in Scotland. He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, Int’l Thriller Writers, Philadelphia Dramatists’ Center and is the newly elected vice-president of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime chapter. James has an MFA from the University of Washington. A Pacific Northwest native, he lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. You can learn more at jamesmccrone.com

Erica Obey

Erica Obey is the author of Dazzlepaint, as well as four other historical and paranormal novels, including the award-winning The Curse of the Braddock Brides. She is also working on a cozy series featuring a librarian and her AI sidekick, which could best be described as Knives Out meets Ready Player One. Erica has served as Chair of the MWA-NY Mentor Program and is the current Chapter President. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and taught college-level classes on fairy tale and fantasy, mystery fiction, and Arthurian romance, before she decided she’d rather be writing the stories herself.

Lori Robbins

Brooklyn-born Lori Robbins began dancing at age 16 and launched her professional career three years later. Robbins performed with a number of modern dance and ballet companies, including Ballet Hispanico and the St. Louis Concert Ballet. The opening work in her On Pointe Mystery Series, Murder in First Position, won first place in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Best Mystery, was a finalist for a Silver Falchion, and is long-listed for a Mystery and Mayhem Book Award. Murder in Second Position will be released on December 7th. Her debut novel, Lesson Plan for Murder, won the Silver Falchion Award and was a finalist in the Readers’ Choice and Indie Book Awards. It will be re-released by Level Best Books in June, 2022. Short stories include “Accidents Happen” in Murder Most Diabolical and “Leading Ladies” in Justice for All. She is an expert in the homicidal impulses everyday life inspires.

Jeff Soloway

Jeff Soloway won the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America and is the author of the Travel Writer mystery series for Penguin Random’s Alibi imprint. His short fiction has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place, various MWA anthologies, and elsewhere. His story “Jerome” is forthcoming in the anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, edited by S. A. Cosby.