Essex Hemphill on Battling AIDS and Racism in Poetry

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.

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.

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.

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