Literary Figures

Author Henry Alford. Newsday reviewer Adam Begley mused about what to call Alford. "New York prankster?" Manhattan Monkeyshine Maven?" "Gotham Caparist?" His publisher calls him an investigative humorist. Alford has chronicled his offbeat investigations in his new book "Municipal Bondage: One Man's Anxiety-Producing Adventures in the Big City." (Random House.) Alford writes of his efforts to enter professions for which he was completely untutored--cosmetologist, snack food creator, dog groomer, earlobe model.

Author and former field engineer, editor, actor, migrant farm worker, farmer, trapper, truck driver and sailor Gary Paulsen. Paulsen has authored books for adults, young adults and children. His latest book for adult readers is "Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod" (Harcourt Brace and Company). The Iditarod has been called "the last great race on earth." It is the grueling 1,180 mile dogsled race over the Arctic terrain from Anchorage to Nome. Paulsen ran it twice. During training for the race, Paulsen almost lost his dogs and his own life.

Writer Elaine Marcus Starkman. Starkman's new book, "Learning to Sit in Silence: A Journal of Caretaking" (Papeir-Mache), is a fictionalized journal of caring for her elderly mother-in-law. Starkman explores the love, guilt, and anger that accompanies aging and death for so many. Starkman has also written "The Best Time" and "Love Scene." (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Storyteller Garrison Keillor. He's the host and writer of "A Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio--a show that "pokes at the heart of American sensibilities and sensitivities." His new book is called "The Book of Guys" (Viking). Keillor has written five other books including the best-seller "Lake Wobegon Days."

Writer Dagobero Gilb. His new book of short stories, "Magic of Blood" (University of New Mexico Press), offers fiction from the Chicano and Anglo working-class worlds of America's southwest. GILB's prosaic realism has been called by one critic, "the most lethal kind of fiction a Chicano can write".

Novelist and Poet James Dickey. Now 70, the author of the famed novel "Deliverance" and many volumes of poetry has released his third work of fiction, "To the White Sea" (Houghton Mifflin): a taut tale told in bare language of one pilot's survival in the waning days of World War II.

Novelist Frank Conroy. At 57, he's just published his first novel, "Body & Soul" (Houghton & Mifflin). He is currently the director of the prestigious Iowa Writers Program, and this novel has been long awaited by fans of his 1967 autobiography "Stop Time". Conroy has one other book, a collection of short stories called "Midair"; he's worked as a jazz pianist in Greenwich Village and Nantucket for many years.

Children's book writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak. He's been at it for over 40 years. His books are classics: "Where the Wild Things Are," "In the Night Kitchen," and others. They are "unsentimental fantasizes" (LA Times Magazine), challenging the belief that children should be protected from their fears and anxieties. In all, Sendak has illustrated 80 children's books (19 of which he wrote).

A new young poet and short-story writer Sherman Alexie. He's a 26 year-old Native American who grew up on the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation in Washington State.

Terry talks with two authors of children books which were once part of the reading list for the Rainbow curriculum in the New York Public schools. The two books were controversial, and removed from the list, because they dealt with children of gay parents. Leslea (Les-LEE-ah) Newman is the author of "Heather has Two Mommies," and Michael Willhoite wrote "Daddy's Roommate." (Both books are published by Alyson Publishers, Boston, Mass).