Literary figures/poets

Poet and professor Miller Williams. He teaches at the University of Arkansas. He's been asked to read at Clinton's Inauguration. He's also President Carter's poetry mentor. Miller is best known for his narrative, dramatic, poems of everyday people. He's had a number of collection of poems published. His latest is "The Ways We Touch." (University of Illinois Press) which was originally scheduled for a Fall 1997 release, but moved up because of the inauguration.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet grew up in Detroit and worked in the factories as a young man. He's probably best known for his 1992 book of poems about the working class, "What Work Is," which won the National Book Award. He has several volumes of poetry as well as a memoir. His forthcoming book is called "Unselected Poems."

Poet Hal Sirowitz. His new collection of poems is "Mother Said," (Crown Publishers) and is written in the vernacular of a mother. One reviewer wrote of the poems, "the logical step forward in the comic treatment of Oedipal angst." Sirowitz has appeared on MTV's "Spoken Word Unplugged" and on PBS's "The United States of Poetry."

Novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd. He's written nine novels and and biographies of Charles Dickens and T.S. Eliot. His latest biography is of the 18th century poet, painter and engraver William Blake. It's "Blake: A Biography," (Alfred A. Knopf)

Poet Donald Hall. A year ago, his wife, poet Jane Kenyon died of leukemia. There's a new collection of her work, "Otherwise: New & Selected Poems" (Graywolf Press). Hall will read from the book, including the last poems she wrote, and discuss their life together. Hall also has a forthcoming book of poetry, "The Old Life," (Houghton Mifflin) to be published in June.

U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. He's written several books of poetry including "Praise" and "Human Wishes." He also edited "The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa."

Poet, musician Dave Alvin, is best known for his songwriting and guitar playing for the Blasters and the influential punk band X, as well as his solo career. He has a new collection of his poems and writings called, "Any Rough Times Are Now Behind You,"(Incommunicado)

Nicaraguan poet Daisy Zamora. She was born into a well-to-do, upper-middle class family. When she was four her father was arrested for his part in an attempted coup against the dictator Somoza. Later in adult life Zamora was part of the Sandinista Revolution. After going into exile in Honduras and Costa Rica, Zamora was announcer for the clandestine Radio Sandino. She'll talk with Terry about her work with the voice of the revolution. Zamora now teaches at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua.

Poet and writer Michael Ryan. His first book of poems won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was nominated for a National Book Award in 1974. Ryan's book Good Hunger won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Award for the most outstanding book of poems published in 1989. His new book Secret Life (Pantheon) is his autobiography in which he shares his experiences of childhood molestation and sexual addiction. (Contains brief excerpt of 12/12/1989 interview).

Lee has written two volumes of poetry, Rose and The City in Which I Love You. He's won many awards for his work, including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He's just completed a memoir about his family's refugee experience in America, The Winged Seed. Lee was born in Indonesia; his parents were from China, where his father had been private physician to Mao. After escaping Southeast Asia, the family ended up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where his father headed an all-white Presbyterian church.