Jim Magnuson is an American novelist, playwright, and educator. He is author of almost a dozen novels—among them  Without Barbarians, Ghost Dancing, Windfall, The Hounds of Winter, and Famous Writers I Have Known. He has also written a dozen plays, which have had production at Playwright’s Horizons, Hudson Guild, and St. Peter’s Gate.  He received the Hodder Fellowship of Princeton University for his plays, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an award from the Texas Institute of Letters for his fiction.  His career also includes a stint as a series television writer in Hollywood. Currently, Jim Magnuson is the director of the Michener Center for Writers at the Unviersity of Texas at Austin. He holds a PhD in American Literature from Columbia Univesity.                                               

Leland Moss was an American theatre director. After studying at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and the Dramatic Arts, Moss moved to New York. He worked with LaMama, Playwrights Horizons, the New York Shakespeare Festival. His acting credits include the Broadway production of Yentl, in which he played five characters.

Moss later moved to San Francisco, California, where he concieved his best known work, The AIDS Show, a series of songs, monologues and scenes. It was presented in other cities under the title Unfinished Business. A documentary about the play was shown in 1986. While in the Bay Area, Moss worked extensively with the Theater Rhinocerous, a gay and lesbian theatre, and was active in San Francisco's gay movement 

During his nine years in the Bay Area, Mr. Moss worked principally with the Theater Rhinocerous, a gay and lesbian theater, and was active in the city's gay movement. His play, Quisbies, as well as other works that he directed, explored the impact of AIDS on the gay community.

Moss died of AIDS at the age of 41.