The KGB Bar, true to its name, boasts a Soviet flag at its entrance. Its bright red walls are lined with portraits of mustachioed Russian generals and framed ads for the Daily Worker. Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that the themes tying together the three stories read by Columbia graduate students at KGB last Thursday night were isolation and loneliness.

The Columbia University Faculty Selects reading series is held every first Thursday of the month at KGB, hosted by the Columbia MFA program. Faculty members choose former students to read at every session—readers have already completed their coursework and are either working on their manuscripts or are looking for contracts. Hosted by Faculty Selects curator Bryan Van Dyke—who was also one of the night’s three readers—this past Thursday was the last reading of the season. A cozy crowd of about 30 was mostly composed of Columbia graduate students, curious to hear their classmates’ work, perched on wooden bar stools and sipping beers.

Thursday evening began with a bang, in terms of subject matter at least. Devon Gallegos read an excerpt from “Bite Together,” his book-in-progress, which he candidly describes as a treatise on “how one acquires and accumulates nookie online.” His protagonist checks his voracious sexual appetite by consulting an online Chinese I-Ching oracle, a kind of virtual fortune teller that advises him as to how to attract fellow bloggers on the chatroom “Manhunt.” Gallegos’ tone is entirely matter-of-fact—all observations devoid of overt emotion—even when describing sexual acts in detail. The effect is both surprisingly funny and moving. His character remarks, “Licking his body makes me think of washing his feet. ... Certainly I’ve approached online sex as washing other people’s feet.” Gallegos successfully conveys the isolation and numbness that comes with online sex, hiding dejection beneath his character’s seemingly indifferent statements.

Abby Caran followed, reading from her collection of short stories entitled “Daughters of the Republic.” A nominee for inclusion in Best New American Voices 2009, Caran’s book is about the interactions between people and animals—their pets, their farm animals, and the creatures they encounter in the wild. An excerpt from the title story is told from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl, Leah, during a family road trip. She finds solace in her dogs’ companionship as her father becomes more apathetic and her mother becomes more exasperated. Caran explains, “Animals make really good characters because they evoke a sympathy that you often don’t find with people.” Pets serve as a foil for their human owners, allowing Caran’s readers an interesting means of accessing her characters’ emotions.

Although the last reading was rather off the cuff—host Van Dyke filled in for the third writer who cancelled last minute with an excerpt from his untitled manuscript—it was the most engaging of the night. The book, which Van Dyke says he is close to finishing, is about the expectations and conflicts involved in an interracial marriage. Sajel, an Indian woman, offers to make an authentic Christmas dinner for her WASP in-laws, but she struggles to cook ham, which she (a vegetarian) has never tasted. The story is about Sajel’s isolation from her husband’s family, and Van Dyke articulates her solitude in elegant and fluid sentences. He describes, for example, Sajel’s fear that her unborn baby will feel the same “vague social discomfort, like the itch of a wool blanket on her bare skin,” that she feels while amongst her new family. More serious but no less entertaining than the other two stories, Van Dyke’s excerpt left the audience stirred as they exited the bar.

For aspiring undergraduate writers, attending Faculty Selects is a way to get a sense of the creative writing graduate program. But it is also a fun way to spend a Thursday night—an opportunity to sit under communist propaganda posters in the smoky atmosphere, tasting cocktails and discovering new literary voices. The new season will begin at the start of the 2008-2009 school year.