Seth Flynn Barkan

Seth Flynn Barkan

Seth "Fingers" Flynn Barkan (born 20 July 1980) is an American poet, musician and journalist. He grew up and still currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, which has an evidently strong influence on the content and mood of his poetry. His first volume of poetry, A Cacophony of Near-Fatal Mistakes, was published in 2001 when he was only nineteen years old, and was described in an interview with Barkan as "collection of poems about booze, jazz and his "propensity towards disastrous relationships."

His second volume of poetry, Blue Wizard Is About To Die!: Prose, Poems, and Emoto-Versatronic Expressionist Pieces About Video Games (1980–2003), sold over 5000 copies internationally, making it one of the best-selling poetry books of 2004. It is credited as being the first ever collection of poetry dedicated to the subject of videogames, and its uniqueness of style and subject matter brought him critical acclaim.

His most recent work, a chapbook entitled Your Madness And You: An Instructional Pamphlet, is written from the perspective of the fictional psychologist Doktor Nicodemus Strangelove, detailing the inevitable deterioration of sanity experienced by anyone who chooses to make Las Vegas their home.

An accomplished musician and composer, Barkan is one of the few remaining young performers proficient in stride piano, an early form of jazz similar to ragtime (for which he competed in the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest). He also composed the original score to Rebel Theater Company's 2000 production of Poona the Fuckdog (And Other Plays for Children) which toured in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

He has worked as a contributing writer for the 'alternative weekly' newspaper Las Vegas City Life - bar critic and regular review-columnist with his videogame-themed column 'Kill Everything'.