Cultural Writing. Literary Criticism. Between 1977 and 1985, Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer interviewed each other on a range of topics. Collected here for the first time, the resulting documents, along with accompanying letters, are variously celebratory, flirtatious, experimental, and probing. This volume offers a collaborative portrait of two major American writers in action. Bill Berkson was born in New York in 1939. His recent books include FUGUE STATE, HYMNS OF ST. BRIDGET & OTHER WRITINGS with Frank Ohara, and THE SWEET SINGER OF MODERNISM & OTHER ART WRITINGS: 1985-2003.

Bernadette Mayer was born in 1945 in Brooklyn. She is the author of numerous volumes of both poetry and prose, the most recent of which are Scarlet Tanager and the re-issue of her "epic of daily life," Midwinter Day.