Writer and playwright JIM GRIMSLEY

Writer and playwright JIM GRIMSLEY. He is a writer-in-residence at the 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta, and the winner of Newsday's George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright in 1988. His first novel is "Winter Birds" (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), about a eight-year-old hemophiliac in a poor family, watching a violent fight between his parents on Thanksgiving. GRIMSLEY says the book is "autobiographical, but not an autobiography." He also has been HIV positive for 14 years, making him one of the longest survivors of the virus.