Literary Figures

Writer Andre Dubus. Dubus' short stories earned him 1991's Bernard Malamud Award from the writers group, PEN. In 1986 DUBUS was crippled when he was hit by a car as he was trying to assist another motorist. His new collection of essays is "Dancing After Hours." (Knopf)

Children's book author and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg. His book The Polar Express a fable about a little boy who meets Santa Claus was/is a bestseller. It was written ten years ago, and each year at Christmas it's a big favorite. His new book is Bad Day At Riverbend (Houghton Mifflin). His book Jumanji (published in 1981) has been made into a new movie starring Robin Williams. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Felice Picano talks about losing 74 friends to AIDS. He recently came across a list with 75 people who attended his 40th birthday party in 1984. All but one....who is unaccounted for have died from AIDS.

Writer and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel. He's the author of over 30 books. Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, is known for his work which bears witness to that tragedy. Wiesel has just published the first volume of his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea. In this book Wiesel writes about his childhood before the war, the horrors of Auschwitz, and his life after the war as a Paris based journalist, and as a New York writer, who struggled with the tragedies of the past, and the commitment to not letting the world forget what happened.

Freelance firefighter Peter Leschak battles forest fires in the Northwoods and the West...He's not a smoke jumper he says, he’s a grunt-hiking to remote locations, putting out fires sometimes on his hands and knees-spark by spark. His memoir is called Hellroaring. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Karr has two volumes of poetry The Devil's Tour, and Abacus. She won Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essays, and her work appears in such magazines as Granta, Ploughshares, and Vogue. She has a new memoir called The Liars' Club, about growing up with her eccentric and secretive mother.

In 1989, Lau became a best-selling author with her first book: Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, a memoir of her years on the streets as a suicidal drug addicted teenage prostitute. She also wrote two books of her poetry: You Are Not Who You Claim and Oedipal Dreams. Her latest is a collection of short stories titled Fresh Girls and Other Stories. The 23 year old writer lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Mamet's new novel is a conversation between a grandmother and granddaughter preparing a traditional Passover meal. The grandmother reveals the horrific family history of living through the Polish Pogroms. Mamet also wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, Writing in Restaurants, and the screenplays for The Untouchables and Hoffa.

Biographer Deirdre Bair has written acclaimed biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. Her newest subject is writer and diarist Anais Nin. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes, "Bair's Nin emerges as the complex woman she was, a woman who inspired both wrath and passion in those whose paths crossed hers. It's called Anais Nin: A Biography.

Soviet-born journalist Masha Gessen has just edited a new collection of post-Soviet fiction by women, called "Half A Revolution." She says that most of the writers in the collection belong to the "mute generation" that came of age under Brezhnev. Gessen immigrated to the U.S. in 1981 when she was 14 to be with her parents. She's been an editor, primarily in gay and lesbian press, and was international editor at The Advocate. Gessen has since repatriated to Russia.