Literary Figures

Novelist Laurie Colwin has published a collection of essays about food called Home Cooking. While many of her friends enjoy traveling, her idea of a good time is staying home and making a good meal. She also cooks for the needy at homeless shelters.

Writer Bharati Mukherjee moved from India to the United States to study at the University of Iowa. Her stories and novels examine the nuances of immigrant life, and how people must negotiate two, often contradictory value systems.

Clarence Major is an experimental, African American writer. His latest novel, Painted Turtle: Women with Guitar -- along with his last book, Such Was the Season -- uses more conventional narrative techniques. He joins Fresh Air to discuss language and storytelling in the black community.

William Novak is the go-to ghostwriter for famous people who want to publish a memoir. He's best known for Lee Iacocca's autobiography. Novak is now working with First Lady Nancy Reagan.

In addition to his career as a science fiction writer, Bradbury helped design Disney's Epcot Center and the Pavilion of the Future for the 1964 World's Fair. His new collection of short stories is called the Toynbee Convector.

Andrew Holleran has writes about the lives of gay men. Now that several years have passed since the height of the AIDS epidemic, he's observed a kind of resignation to mortality and changing sexuality within his community.. Holleran's new collection of essays is called Ground Zero.

Writer Sheila Ballantyne's newest collection of short stories explores mortality. She says her musings on death help her better appreciate the time she has right now.

Bobbie Ann Mason's new, Spence and Lila, is about a couple who copes with the wife's breast cancer. Her previous novel, In Country, is being made into a film. She joins Fresh Air to talk about her approach to writing and the clowder of farm cats she raised.

Sci-fi writer and editor Bruce Sterling says that the cyberpunk movement doesn't anticipate the future--it describes the how technological innovation affects culture today.

None of the stories in the writer's debut collection were previously published; magazines hated her dark, sexually charged stories of young women. But the book--and Gaitskill--have now found critical acclaim.