Literary Figures: Novelists

Writer Ann Bannon (her pseudonym) has written a number of books of lesbian pulp fiction, including "Odd Girl Out," "I Am a Woman," and "Journey to a Woman." Bannon went on to become a college dean, and has kept her identity a secret.

Before he became a well-known detective novelist, Lawrence Block wrote a number of books of lesbian pulp fiction, under the pseudonym Jill Emerson (and others). Block is best known for his detective novels featuring the Manahatten private eye, Matt Scudder. His novels have followed Scudder through alcoholism and into recovery through an Alcoholics Anonymous program.

Actor Gene Hackman. The star of the films "Bonnie and Clyde," "The French Connection," "The Conversation," and "Unforgiven" is now an author. He's collaborated with Daniel Lenihan (LEN-ah-han) who we'll also from hear from (one of the world's leading underwater archaeologists) on the new novel, "Wake of the Perdido Star: A novel of shipwrecks, pirates, and the sea" (Newmarket Press). (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

Writer and Emergency doctor Frank Huyler (HIGH-ler). Huyler has transformed his experiences working in emergency rooms and hospitals into a series of short stories. His new book is called "The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine (University of California Press)." His poetry has appeared in a number of publications including the Atlantic Monthly.

Actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes They're best known for their respective roles in "The English Patient" and "Shakespeare in Love." Their mother, Jennifer Lash, was an accomplished novelist in England. Her last novel, "Blood Ties" was written as she was dying of breast cancer. Her sons talk about their mother. Their sister Sophie, also joins the conversation.

Novelist A.M. Homes. Her new book is "Music for Torching" (Rob Weisbach Books/William Morrow). Her previous novels are "The End of Alice," "In a Country of Mothers," and "Jack." She teaches writing programs at Columbia University and the New School.

Novelist, screenwriter and biographer A.E. Hotchner. His memoir "Papa Hemingway" (Carroll & Graff) about his friend and colleague, Ernest Hemingway has just been republished. Hotchner met Hemingway when he was a 20-something journalist, on assignment to interview Hemingway for Cosmopolitan magazine. That first interview in 1948 developed into a 14 year friendship.

British writer Pat Barker is best known for her "Regeneration" trilogy set in the shadows of WWI. In 1995,
she received the Booker Prize for its concluding novel, The Ghost Road. She has written the new novel "Another World." (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) Pat Barker grew up poor in the industrial North, once remarking that her decision to write about war was a deliberate response to patronizing reviews of her working-class settings in her earlier novels.

John Callahan has edited the manuscript, "Juneteenth," of a never before published book by Ralph Ellison who died in 1994. Ellison's first and only book released in 1952, "Invisible Man," won the National Book Award. Callahan was named Ellison's literary executor and is editor of "The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison." Callahan is a professor of humanities at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Dan Fesperman is the former Berlin Bureau correspondent for the Baltimore Sun 1993-1996. From there he extensively covered Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. He has drawn for his experience there for the setting of his new crime novel "Lie in the Dark." (Soho) It is about a Sarajevo homicide detective who must do his job while corpses pile up from the on-going civil war.