Alice Walker, who has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is one of America's best known and well loved writers. Since publishing her first book of poems in the late 1960s, she has been churning out books of essays, novels, short stories, and poetry at a prodigious clip. Productivity, however, is not her real calling card; what Walker is known for, above all, is her compassion and...

Composer, distinguished author and translator, and man of belles letters, Paul Bowles passed away in 1999 in Morocco, which was for many years was his primary place of residence. Bowles best-known work is probably his novel The Sheltering Sky, though he also translated Sartre's "Huis Clos" (upon which he bestowed the title "No Exit") and was an accomplished composer of music for the theatre....