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Texas-born musician and Nashville songwriter, BILLY JOE SHAVER. At 54, he plays with his son in a band called "Shaver" -- their new album is "Tramp on Your Street" (Zoo/Praxis), his first recording in ten years. SHAVER's songs, as recorded by Waylon Jennings on the 1973 "Honky Tonk Heroes" album, began the "outlaw" movement in country music. Since then, his songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash. SHAVER has been called a "redneck William Blake" by the Chicago Tribune, and the album has recieved acclaim for, "its unnaffected blend of hot-lickin' honkey tonk and roadhouse rock, offering disgrunteld country fans a potent antidote to the formulas of the New Nashville".

Performance poet SEKOU SUNDIATA (SAY-coo SOON-de-ah-ta). Often he performs with his music ensemble, "Dadahdoodahda." A Village Voice critic wrote of SUNDIATA, ". . . like Billie Holiday, Sundiata surprises with images and tumbling phrases that blend with subtle rhythmic variations. Dadahdoodahda provided enough familiar riffs and melodies to fill a dance floor. . . With boy next door charm and trickster wit, Sundiata leaves your skull intact, but repositions it to square the glitter of false prophets with the voices in your head." SUNDIATA's work includes the performance piece, "The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop." His latest "The Mystery of Love," is currently making its world premiere at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia.

Writer MIKAL GILMORE, youngest brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore's 1977 death --at his own request-- by firing squad in Utah, was the first American execution in ten years. Brother MIKAL finds seeds of his brother's two murders sown far back in Gilmore family history, and its Mormon roots. When asked why he writes a memoir twenty years after the events many Americans remember from Norman Mailer's book "Executioner's Song", GILMORE says, "I'm writing about it now because for many years I tried to live my life as if I wasn't a member of the same family. I put a good deal of distance between myself and other people in my family, and between myself and the history of my family." Recapturing that history is the aim of his new memoir, "Shot in the Heart" (Doubleday). (Rebroadcast. Originally aired 5

2: Playwright, poet, and performer LANE NISHIKAWA. His one-man show "I'm on a Mission from Buddha," is about some of culturally-based absurdities he's endured as a Japanese-American. NISHIKAWA said he put together the show of vignettes in order to answer, "all the nerdy, cliche-ridden, Asian-American images." His characters include a Japanese-American World War Two hero, and a Sushi-phobic redneck. "I'm on a Mission from Buddha," can also be seen on PBS. NISHIKAWA is the former Artistic Director of the Asian American Theatre Company in San Francisco and has taught creative writing in the Asian American Studies Dept at San Francisco State University. He's also appeared in the films, "Eat a Bowl of Tea," and "Living on Tokyo Time."

Book critic JOHN LEONARD reviews "Drums Along the Congo," by Rory Nugent (Houghton Mifflin).

Commentator MAUREEN CORRIGAN has a holiday round-up of some of her favorite books of the year, including two newly published books, "Inspector Imanishi Investigates" by Seicho Matsumoto (Soho), and "The Folding Star" by Alan Hollinghurst (Pantheon). Also included are"The Alienist," Caleb Carr; "Henry and Clara," Thomas Mallon; "The Bird Artist," Howard Norman; "A Map of the World," Jane Hamilton; "The Western Canon," Harold Bloom; "Where the Girls Are," Susan Douglas; "Nellie Bly," Brooke Kroeger; "No Gifts From Chance," Shari Benstock; "You Can''t Be Neutral on a Moving Train," Howard Zinn;"The Silent Woman," Janet Malcolm.

War correspondent and CNN's international correspondent PETER ARNETT. He's best known for his reporting from Baghdad during the allied bombing raid which heralded the start of the Gulf War. ARNETT has over 30 years of experience reporting, mostly for the Associated Press. He won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Vietnam war . Later he covered wars in Cyprus and Lebanon. In 1981 he made the switch to television, when he joined CNN. After learning the ropes, he was sent to El Salvador, Moscow, and then Iraq. ARNETT has a new memoir, "Peter Arnett: Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad - 35 Years in the World's War Zones." (Simon & Schuster). (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE

Actor EVAN HANDLER. He's played leading roles in seven Broadway productions including, "Six Degrees of Separation," "Brighton Beach Memoirs," and "Master Harold. . . and the boys." He's 32 now; seven years ago he was diagnosed with leukemia. He had a bone marrow transplant, and he's not considered free of the disease. He has a new monologue, "Time on Fire," about his four year struggle with leukemia.

2: Singer/guitarist BOB MOULD. In the 1980's, he pioneered "alternative rock" with the band "Husker Du," making "angry, self-hating music." MOULD went solo for a while after the band fell apart. Now he's with the band "Sugar" and they've released their third album, "File Under: Easy Listening," (Ryko). One reviewer writes of the new release that it "shows Mould near the peak of his power-pop form and harbors a few prominently catchy songs." (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES AFTER THE ATC PROMO).

Interview with FLOYD COCHRAN, continued.