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2: Novelist and short-story writer ROBERT BOSWELL. He's best known for his novels, "Crooked Hearts," and "The Geography of Desire." Of those books, one reviewer wrote (Mr. Boswell) "has a marvelous ability to creat ensemble pieces populated by people who are rich in both psychological detail and idiosyncrasy." His novels focus on families, and the connections between people. BOSWELLS's new novel is "Mystery Ride," (Knopf) about a failed marriage that endures, however, in the hearts of the couple. BOSWELL also teaches at New Mexico State University and at the Warren Wilson Master of Fine Arts Program for Writers in North Carolina.

2: The former head of NBC's television programming PAT WEAVER (Sylvester L. "Pat" Weaver, Jr.). He began that job in the early days of the medium - in 1949 - and was the creator of two of television's longest running shows, the "Today" show and the "Tonight" show. WEAVER started his career in radio, where he worked with comic Fred Allen. And he was advertising manager for the American Tobacco Company, under the eccentric tobacco magnate George Washington Hill. WEAVER has a new memoir of his career, "The Best Seat in the House," (Knopf). It was written with Thomas M. Coffey.

Ken Tucker reviews the new benefit album organized to help singer/songwriter Victoria Williams, who is afflicted with mutliple sclerosis: "Sweet Relief". The album features Lou Reed, Pearl Jam, Matthew Sweet and others performing her songs.

1) Director of Health Policy, Department of Public Health, MATHEA (pronounced "ma-THAY-ah") FALCO. She was an advisor to Clinton, during the presidential campaign. She's written extensively about drugs, drug abuse, and drug policy. She has a new book, "The Making of a Drug-Free America: Programs that Work," (Random House). Int. 2: Sociologist, and research associate at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, ELLIOTT CURRIE. He's also taught sociology and criminology at Yale and at the University of California. He's written a number of books, "Dope and Trouble: Portraits of Delinquent Youth," and "Confronting Crime." He has a new book, "Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities, and the American Future," (Hill and Wang, 19 Union Square West, New York, N.Y.

Actor JAMES EARL JONES. His is one of the distinctive voices of our time, yet few people know he fights a stutter; JONES' stage work off-Broadway in Jean Genet's "The Blacks" and Athol Fugard's "The Blood Knot" lead to a Broadway success in "The Great White Way", for which JONES won a Tony. His work in August Wilson's "Fences" won him another. It took one day to record the voice track for Darth Vader in "Star Wars": a performance which lead to many other commercial voice-over projects. JONES has just released his memoirs, "Voices and Silences" (Scribners).

2: Journalist BETTY ROLLIN. Her 1976 best-selling book about surviving breast-cancer, "First, You Cry," is being reissued. (Harper Rollins). ROLLIN lost one breast to cancer in 1975 and then in 1984 she had the other breast removed. ROLLIN also wrote the book, "Last Wish," in 1986 about helping her mother -- who was dying from ovarian cancer -- to die.

Civil Rights attorney CHAI (pronounced "HI") FELDBLUM ("BLUM" pronounced like "plum"), visiting professor, Georgetown University law Center. She was also former legislative counsel, AIDS and Lesbian and Gay Rights projects of the ACLU. She's policy director for the new group, "Campaign for Military Service," organized to rally support for the end of the ban on gays and lesbians in the military.

Commentator MAUREEN CORRIGAN reviews "The Partisan" (Atheneum) by Benjamin Cheever.

2: ROBERT OLEN BUTLER is the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction for "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain," (Henry Holt & Co.) a collection of 15 first-person stories by Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana. BUTLER has written seven novels in all, several of them dealing with the Vietnamese experience, in Vietnam and in America. BUTLER's latest book is "They Whisper," (Henry Holt), about intimacy between a man and a woman.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a newly discovered concert from 1957 of the Thelonious Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane, "Live at the Five Spot" (Blue Note).

Journalist MOLLY MOORE. She is New Delhi bureau chief for "The Washington Post." She covered the war in the Gulf, traveling with a general and his troops into Kuwait, where she says she witnessed "the fiercest and most chaotic 100 hours" of the War. This was the allied ground attack on Iraqi troops, and the liberation of Kuwait. MOORE has written a new book about it, "A Woman at War: Storming Kuwait with the U.S. Marines." (Charles Scribner's

Commentator GAYLE PEMBERTON on the importance of African-American magazines.