(le) poisson rouge

J.C. Hallman grew up in Southern California. He is the author of The Chess Artist, The Devil is a Gentleman, and The Hospital for Bad Poets. A book about modern utopias, In Eutopia, is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in Spring 2010.

Paul Harding has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught writing at Harvard and The University of Iowa. He lives near Boston with his wife and two sons.

Dana Rossi is a writer, performer, and hopeless music nerd. She has written for several publications and websites, including Time Out New York, Broken Pencil, New York Press, and The Retroist. She is the recipient of a 2008 New York Press Association Award for a feature about understudies to celebrities on Broadway. Dana writes and tells a story for every Soundtrack Series, but in addition to the Soundtrack Series, she has also performed stories for reading series run by InDigest magazine as well as Quickies, a spin off of the In the Flesh series hosted by erotica writer and editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel.

Dana’s music nerdery covers the basics (start Dark Side of the Moon on the MGM Lion’s roar before The Wizard of Oz…Pat Benetar was the first woman played on MTV…etc.) but it does not imply any kind of holier-than-thou hipster factor. She’s a true nerd— an aficionado who is also proudly well versed in everything that makes music vastly uncool—the work of cheesy 80s one hit wonders or early 90s supergroups, the soft sounds of the late 70s, the b-sides to Carpenters 45s, and the words to Kenny Rogers songs other than “The Gambler”. It ain’t glamour knowledge, but sometimes it’s just fun to know about Michael Nesmith’s solo work.