Originally published in 1983 by Continuum, the late Claudia Tate’s collection of interviews has long been out of print. This new edition, with a foreword by Tillie Olsen, brings candid conversations with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, and others to a new generation of writers. Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art. “This collection transcends its genre,” writes Olsen. “It becomes a harbinger book, a book of revelation, of haunting challenge, opening on to central concerns not only of writing, but of life, of living, today.”
