KGB Bar is a small, stubborn, simple room that does its part to keep the city’s guttering literary flame alight. On most nights, there’s a reading—poets, novelists, editors, students, old lions. Hang around long enough and you’re likely to rub elbows with someone whose work you admire. And the big names aren’t slumming it here—in a sense, it’s as much a bar as a literary laboratory.

One flight up and off the street, KGB is hard to stumble upon by accident. The decor is pseudo-communist themed: peeling red paint and propaganda poster art, the odd portrait and relic. It’s grubby in the right way; writers do love the trappings of struggle and strife. There are some small tables and a short bar and that’s about it. Close quarters mean that if you, say, pull out your phone in the middle of a r

See Full Page