ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 11, 1996 TAG: 9605130056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
Janet Cooke says she's learned her lesson and wants to resume a writing career, 15 years after being forced to give back a Pulitzer Prize for making up a story about a young heroin addict.
``I was guilty. I did it, and I'm sorry that I did it,'' the former Washington Post reporter said in the June issue of GQ magazine.
Cooke, 41, says she began lying as a child to try to avoid domination by her demanding father, according to the article, written by a former lover and Post colleague, Mike Sager.
``Lying, from a very early age, was the best survival mechanism available,'' Cooke said. ``And I became very good at it.''
After admitting in 1981 that ``Jimmy's World'' was fiction, she left the Post and journalism. She married, moved to Paris, divorced and returned to the United States about two years ago.
Cooke lives in Kalamazoo, Mich., where she works as a department store sales clerk.
LaToya Jackson is set to divorce husband Jack Gordon. ``I got a restraining order,'' said Michael's outcast sister. ``He beat me.'' Gordon, accused of throwing a chair at Jackson in 1993, denies the most recent accusation but agrees the marriage is kaput.
Barry Tuckwell, 65, the world's premier French horn player, will become an American citizen on Friday. The Aussie-born director of the Maryland Symphony notes that he's lived here for 30 years and ``in a way I have more friends all over the U.S. than anywhere else.''
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB