Lyricist Betty Comden, critic John Simon, and actor and director Alvin Epstein will present the 1998 Theatre Library Association Book Awards at a ceremony on May 29 at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Epstein will present the George Freedley Memorial Award for excellence in writing about live theatre to Gary Jay Williams for his book Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Theatre. Simon, meanwhile, will present the Freedley honorable mention to Michael A. Morrison, who wrote John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor. Cari Beauchamp has won the Theatre Library Association Award for her Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. Her prize will be presented by Comden. The Theatre Library Association honorable mention, presented by Ron Hutchinson, founder of the Vitaphone Project, goes to Donald Crafton, for his The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-31. A cash prize accompanies each award.

This year represents the awards 30th anniversary. For information on the ceremony, call (212) 870-1620.

--By Robert Simonson