Terry Gross

Grimsley is a writer-in-residence at the 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta, and the winner of Newsday's George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright in 1988. His first novel is "Winter Birds," about an eight-year-old hemophiliac in a poor family who witnesses violent fight between his parents on Thanksgiving. Grimsley says the book is "autobiographical, but not an autobiography." He also has been HIV positive for 14 years, making him one of the longest survivors of the virus.

The Grammy Award-winning jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. He's been playing the trumpet since he was six, and won his first Grammy at 20. Marsalis is also the cofounder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He recently announced that he is breaking up the Septet so he can spend more time with the Lincoln Center. "Sweet Swing Blues on the Road" is his new book, written in collaboration with photographer Frank Stewart.

Canty's stories have been published in "Esquire" and "Story" magazine. His first book is a collection of short stories, "A Stranger in This World." The stories are about people feeling alien in their own world; Canty says, "the moment I'm interested in, the moment I'm working toward in these stories, is when the familiar world seems strange. . . where they are forced to confront how little they know about themselves and about the world around them."

Journalist Steven Levy, author of "Hackers," is one of the premiere writers on technology. He writes The Iconoclast column for "Mac World" magazine, and is a contributor to "Wired," "The New Yorker," and the "New York Times Magazine." He talks with Terry today about e-money — the electronic currency of the future. Levy has an article in the December issue of "Wired" about the computerization of money.

Writer and former "New York Times" advertising columnist Randall Rothenberg's new book is "Where the Suckers Moon." He follows Subaru's ad campaign from start to finish, from choosing a new ad agency to the finished commercial's debut during the Superbowl.

Writer Darcy Frey, a contributing editor to "Harper's" and "The New York Times Magazine," spent a year at the Abraham Lincoln High School on Coney Island. He followed four young, African American basketball players trying to make it out of the ghetto and into a Division I school. "The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams" is his record of what happened to the dreams of these young men.

Kushner is the author of "Angels in America," for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for Best Play. It's a two-part "seven hour epic about gays, AIDS and Reaganism" (New York "Newsday"). Kushner reads a new poem, a plea to God about the AIDS epidemic.

Trinidad's latest book is "Answer Song." He and Dennis Cooper are co-editing a volume of selected poems by Tim Dlugos called "Powerless."

Doty won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle award for his poetry, My Alexandria. He is currently a Fannie Hearst Visiting Professor at Brandeis University. He tells Terry about caring for his lover, who died of AIDS.

Hemphill is the author of two books of poetry, "Earth Life" and "Conditions," and a collection of prose and poetry called "Ceremonies." He's also the editor of "Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men." He reads an excerpt from his poem "Vital Signs," published in the collection "Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS," edited by Thomas Avena.