Funded by a grant from Paul Kelly, the Kelly Writers House Fellows Program enables us to realize two unusual goals. We want to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with authors of great accomplishment in an informal atmosphere conducive to discussion, conversation, even disagreement and challenge. We also want to resist the time-honored distinction-more honored in practice than in theory-between working with eminent writers on the one hand and studying literature on the other. The 1999 Writers House Fellow, Gay Talese (Honor Thy Father, The Kingdom and the Power, "Frank Sinatra Had a Cold"), taught a weekly semester-long seminar in the Writers House "Arts Café" for twenty-five students and participate in a series of public events. The 1999-2000 Writers House Fellows, Grace Paley, Robert Creeley, and John Edgar Wideman, will work with students in a seminar called "Contemporary American Writing" (English 285) taught by Class of 1942 Professor of English & Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis. Each visit will include-in addition to a session with the students in the seminar--a public reading, a time for informal discussion in the Writers House living room, a dinner, and a Tuesday morning interview conducted before a live audience and simultaneous "webcast" from the Arts Café of the Kelly Writers House.