When should a writer's private life remain private? That is what some of the Bay Area's most popular writers will discuss March 1 at the Berkeley Rep mainstage (2025 Addison Street).

The Panel includes Dorothy Bryant ("Confessions of Madame Psyche"), Jon Carroll (Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle), Tracy Johnston ("Shooting the Boh: One Woman's Voyage Down the Wildest River in Borneo"), and Henry Mayer ("All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery"). All the panelist have used their own real lives in their writings at some point and will be discussing ethics, privacy, and where to draw the line (if at all).

The discussion is sponsored by Berkeley Rep's Moss Programs for Education, and is presented in conjunction with the company's latest play Collected Stories. It is a story of a mentor writer who confides a secret to her young protegee. The young writer writes a novel based on this secret and it gets published -- exposing the mentor's secret. Collected Stories plays through March 5.

Admission to the Panel is free. For more information call (510) 841-2541.

-- By Angelica Roderick