Changing of the Guard in the Red Room

After 10-plus years, one of Manhattan’s leading readings directors has stepped down. Suzanne Dottino, who has helmed the readings at downtown Manhattan’s KGB bar for at least a decade, has passed her director’s baton to new talent, as yet unnamed.

Dottino’s tenure saw the little-known reading series grow into a must-appear booking for fiction writers from newbies to literary institutions such as the Irish author and three-time Booker Prize nominee Colm Toiben.

The community of writers who presented their work under Dotino’s guidance stretches from Europe to the West Coast at least. This reporter recalls a chat with novelist Sarah Shun-lien Bynum in Los Angeles in which she said her KGB appearance in Dottino’s series was a highlight of the book tour for her first novel, "Madeleine is Sleeping."

Dottino, a fiction writer and playwright, who teaches at CUNY, will presumably spend more time on writing and teaching now that she has shed the administrative duties of her gig as one of New York’s most respected readings directors. Patrons will still be able to guzzle the authentic, if nasty, Baltica beer at the Russian-themed nightspot, but Dottino's curatorial touch will be missed.