Includes index.

Passing the torch / Candyce Barnes -- The books not read, the lines not written : a poet confronts his mortality / Donald Hall -- Breaking the "rules" of story structure / Diane Lefer -- With a little help from my friends / Tony Kushner -- Criss-crossed with stories / Josip Novakovich -- Someone is writing a poem / Adrienne Rich -- Your mother's passions, your sister's woes : writing about the living / Bonnie Friedman -- Letter to a young article writer / Donald M. Murray -- The literature of personal disaster / Nancy Mairs -- How to tell a true story / Margot Livesey -- I dreamed the story of a dream / Allan Gurganus -- Lessons of a lifetime / James Michener -- Women and biography / Carolyn G. Heilbrun -- Where characters come from / Ann Beattie -- The screenwriter's lexicon / David Freeman -- Inglish : writing with an accent / Ayanna Black -- Why stories fail / Ben Nyberg -- Mistakes people make about poetry / James Fenton -- Nonfiction in first person, without apology / Natalia Rachel Singer -- Death of the western / William Kittredge -- On playwriting / Edward Albee -- It's a bad time out there for emotion / Edna O'Brien -- The writing of "Adjusting to the light" and "An August evening outside of Nashville" / Miller Williams -- The way we write now : the reality of AIDS in contemporary short fiction / Sharon Oard Warner -- Better and sicker / Lorrie Moore -- Imagining what you don't know / Paula Fox -- My father's place / Kim R. Stafford.