In the following interview, Steinberg discusses with Hanff her method of self-education and the impact of writing in her life.

The frustrated actress in Helene Hanff, well documented in her autobiographical chronicles: 84, Charing Cross Road, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Underfoot in Show Business, and in her latest work, Q's Legacy, out this month from Little, Brown (Fiction Forecasts, June 14), gives a bravura performance to raise the curtain on our interview. A pixie with moxie, Hanff takes center-stage in her one-room Manhattan apartment to deliver a mock excoriation of PW and her interviewer in particular.

"I am infuriated that Publishers Weekly is interviewing me," she begins, and goes on to explain that she had no sooner finished writing an article, fashioned especially for PW, about "how one gets to be a walking ad" for one's publishers, when we called to request this interview, thus precluding the purchase...