Terry Gross

Reporter for The Washington Post Nathan McCall. He's written a new autobiography, "Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America." (Random House). When McCall was twenty years old he was sent to prison for armed robbery.

Folklorist Alan Lomax. He's spent more than a half century recording the folk music and customs of the world. Here in America, he's responsible for priceless recordings of Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton, and many others. (REBROADCAST from 7/9/90). LOMAX won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his non-fiction book, "The Land Where the Blues Began."

Writer Edmund White. He has been called "unquestionably the foremost American gay novelist." White's novels draw significantly from his own experiences in a style he calls "auto-fiction." In his newest book, "Genet: A Biography" (Knopf), White documents the life of controversial French writer, Jean Genet. (The book just won the National Book Critic's Circle Award for biography).

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the film "Reality Bites," a comedy about Love in the '90's, directed by Ben Stiller and starring Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke.

Lebanese-born author and journalist Hanan Al-Shaykh. Her novel "The Story of Zahra" (Anchor Books) has just been published in the United States. Several Arab countries have banned the book since its original publication 14 years ago. The Story of Zahra tells of a contemporary Lebanese woman struggling with life in her family and her war-ravaged native city of Beirut. Al-Shaykh's novel "Women of Sand and Myrrh" was published in the United States last year.

Sheila Rothman author of "Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in America."

Tribute to Randy Shilts who died of AIDS. (Rebroadcast of 07/05/1990 and 04/23/1993)

Poet and Professor of English at Yale, Wayne Koestenbaum explores the affinity of gay men for opera in his new book: "The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire" (Vintage). Koestenbaum traces the art-form back to its origins in The Camerata, a 16th century group of Florentine gentlemen, who studied ancient Greek musical theory. A self proclaimed "Opera Queen", Koestenbaum explores this rarely examined territory with what one critic has called "a brilliantly obsessive and funny memoir".

Author John Cavanagh. Cavanagh is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. He is the co-author with Richard Barnet, of "Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations & the New World Order" (Simon & Schuster), which examines the growth of multi-national corporations. They profile five of the world's most powerful corporations, and show how they are less accountable to public authorities, are paving the way for future political conflict, and are "stimulating political and social disintegration".

Rapper and actor Ice-T...one of the most popular of the "gangsta" rappers. Although he does not often get his songs played on the radio, all five of his albums have gone gold. Greg Knot of The Chicago Tribune has written that "Ice-T. is that rare gangster rapper who leads with his brain instead of his gun or his crotch." IIce-T.'s 1992 song "Cop Killer," landed him at the center of a controversy about gangsta rap--is it a legitimate form of expression or is it incendiary hate-mongering. Ice-T.