Books & Literature

Brown's new book is a collection of connected short stories about caring for people with AIDS. Though the work is fiction, many of the characters are based on people she herself worked with. Brown is the author of other books including "The Terrible Girls," "Annie Oakley's Girls," and "The Children's Crusade."

Grimsley is a writer-in-residence at the 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta, and the winner of Newsday's George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright in 1988. His first novel is "Winter Birds," about an eight-year-old hemophiliac in a poor family who witnesses violent fight between his parents on Thanksgiving. Grimsley says the book is "autobiographical, but not an autobiography." He also has been HIV positive for 14 years, making him one of the longest survivors of the virus.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan has a holiday round-up of some of her favorite books of the year, including two newly published books, "Inspector Imanishi Investigates" by Seicho Matsumoto, and "The Folding Star" by Alan Hollinghurst.

The Grammy Award-winning jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. He's been playing the trumpet since he was six, and won his first Grammy at 20. Marsalis is also the cofounder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He recently announced that he is breaking up the Septet so he can spend more time with the Lincoln Center. "Sweet Swing Blues on the Road" is his new book, written in collaboration with photographer Frank Stewart.

Canty's stories have been published in "Esquire" and "Story" magazine. His first book is a collection of short stories, "A Stranger in This World." The stories are about people feeling alien in their own world; Canty says, "the moment I'm interested in, the moment I'm working toward in these stories, is when the familiar world seems strange. . . where they are forced to confront how little they know about themselves and about the world around them."

Writer and former "New York Times" advertising columnist Randall Rothenberg's new book is "Where the Suckers Moon." He follows Subaru's ad campaign from start to finish, from choosing a new ad agency to the finished commercial's debut during the Superbowl.

Doty won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle award for his poetry, My Alexandria. He is currently a Fannie Hearst Visiting Professor at Brandeis University. He tells Terry about caring for his lover, who died of AIDS.

Michael Denneny is currently an editor at Crown Publishers. He worked with many gay authors in his 17 years at St. Martins Press, where he had his own imprint, Stonewall Editions.

Kushner is the author of "Angels in America," for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for Best Play. It's a two-part "seven hour epic about gays, AIDS and Reaganism" (New York "Newsday"). Kushner reads a new poem, a plea to God about the AIDS epidemic.

Hemphill is the author of two books of poetry, "Earth Life" and "Conditions," and a collection of prose and poetry called "Ceremonies." He's also the editor of "Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men." He reads an excerpt from his poem "Vital Signs," published in the collection "Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS," edited by Thomas Avena.

Trinidad's latest book is "Answer Song." He and Dennis Cooper are co-editing a volume of selected poems by Tim Dlugos called "Powerless."

Jeff Moss was one of the original creators and writers of "Sesame Street." He created Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch, and wrote such songs as "Rubber Ducky" and "People in Your Neighborhood." He has won 13 Emmy's, four Grammy's, and an Oscar nomination for his work on "Sesame Street" and with the Muppets. Moss is also the author of four books for children, the newest of which is "Hieronymus White: A Bird Who Believed That He Always Was Right."

Panter is well known in the punk-rock scene, and was a founding member and writer of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." She is a member of the punk band Honk if Yer Horny. In 1992, Panter co-founded The Bohemian Women's Political Alliance, a feminist organization of "the teenagers who dressed in black, the bad girls who climbed out of [their] bedroom windows at dark and caught taxis home at dawn."

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, author of "Maus," for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and "Maus II." The two book-length comics are accounts of Spiegelman's s parents' experiences in the Holocaust. He is also co-founder and editor of "Raw," a magazine of avant-garde comics. He has now illustrated "The Wild Party: The Lost Classic by Joseph Moncure March."

Writer and professor Michael Eric Dyson wrote "Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X." The book explores the different sides of Malcolm X and how his influence is felt today. Dyson is also the author of "Reflecting Black," and a professor of Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina.

Journalist James Traub has written "City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College." This is an exploration of the "open admissions policy" that was implemented at the College in 1970, and the effects this policy has had on the school. Traub examined remedial classes and struggling students, and talked to administrators and professors including Leonard Jeffries, the controversial Chair of the Black Studies Department.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "Remember Laughter," Neil Grauer's biography of James Thurber.

White is the author of seven books, including "Forgetting Elena," "States of Desire: Travels in Gay America," and "Genet: A Biography," for which he was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lamda Literary Award. He has a new collection of essays from the past 25 years, "The Burning Library," many of which focus on gay life in America.

Carter has a new book called "Helping Yourself Help Others." She talks with Terry about helping others and about providing care to the sick and her life since she and her husband left the White House.

The former congresswoman became Louisiana's first woman member of Congress in 1972. She was elected after her husband, then House majority leader Hale Boggs, died in a plane crash. Boggs was an advocate for civil rights and women's issues before her retirement in 1990. She is the mother of NPR and ABC-TV's Cokie Roberts, Washington lobbyist Thomas Hale Boggs, and the late Barbara Sigmund, who was mayor of Princeton, New Jersey. Boggs has new autobiography is called "Washington Through a Purple Veil: Memoirs of a Southern Woman."