Terry Gross

Actress Joan Cusack. She has received two best supporting actress Oscar nominations -- in 1988 for her role in Working Girl, and in 1997 for her role in In and Out. Her other movies include Broadcast News, Addams Family Values, Grosse Pointe Blank, Arlington Road, The Cradle Will Rock and Runaway Bride. She stars with her brother John Cusack in the new film High Fidelity, based on the novel by Nick Hornby. (High Fidelity opens March 31st)

Writer Ernesto Quinonez His debut novel, “Bodega Dreams” (Vintage books), is set in Spanish Harlem. Like his narrator, Quinonez is half Ecuadorean, half-Puerto Rican. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes of the book, “Edgy, street-smart. . . An admirable debut, brimming with energy and refreshingly devoid of genre clichés.”

Tens of thousands of African-American men, women, and children were lynched by mobs in the United States between 1882 and 1968. Some of these lynchings were photographed, and the photos were saved as souvenirs, and were even sometimes used as postcards. Antique dealer James Allen came across these disturbing images and began to collect them. His collection is currently on display at the New York Historical Society. The book about Allen’s collection, called “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” (Twin Palms Publishers) was published earlier this year.