SALINGER Among PBS's American Masters Season 28 Lineup

American Masters Season 28lLineup through April 2014 begins with a milestone: the series' 200th episode on PBS!

Season 28 Premiere/200th episode: Tuesday, January 21 at 9 p.m. on PBS
American Masters: Salinger
Salinger -- the American Masters series' 200th episode -- features interviews with 150 subjects including Salinger's friends, colleagues and members of his inner circle who have never spoken on the record before as well as film footage, photographs and other material that has never been seen. Additionally, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal and Pulitzer Prize-winners A. Scott Berg and ElizaBeth Frank talk about Salinger's influence on their lives, their work and the broader culture. The film is the first work to get beyond the "Catcher in the Rye" author's meticulously built up wall: his childhood, painstaking work methods, marriages, private world and the secrets he left behind after his death in 2010. Two hours, 30 minutes.

Friday, February 7 at 9 p.m. on PBS in honor of African American Heritage Month and Walker's 70th birthday
American Masters - Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth
Most famous for her seminal novel "The Color Purple," writer / activist Alice Walker celebrates her 70th birthday February 9, 1944. Born into a family of sharecroppers in rural Georgia, her life unfolded during the violent racism and seismic social changes of mid-20th century America. Poverty and participation in the civil rights movement were the formative influences on her consciousness, becoming the inherent themes in her writing. The first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Walker continues to shine a light on global human rights issues. Her dramatic life is told with poetry and lyricism, and includes interviews with Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, Toni Morrison, Quincy Jones, Yoko Ono, First Lady Michelle Obama - and, of course, Walker herself. 90 minutes.

Tuesday, April 22 at 9 p.m. on PBS in honor of Earth Day
American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire
A Fierce Green Fire is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement - grassroots and global activism spanning 50 years from conservation to climate change. Inspired by the book of the same name by Philip Shabecoff and informed by advisors like Edward O. Wilson, A Fierce Green Fire chronicles the largest movement of the 20th century and one of the keys to the 21st. It brings together all the major parts of environmentalism and connects them. It focuses on activism, people fighting to save their homes, their lives, the future - and succeeding against all odds. The film is directed and written by Mark Kitchell, Academy Award-nominated director of "Berkeley in the Sixties," and narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende and Meryl Streep. 90 minutes.

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