KATHLEEN CUSHMAN, 42, obtained a peculiarly concrete sense of words and their weight twenty-odd years ago, when she worked in an Oak Grove, Kentucky, print shop and set type by hand for wedding invitations and for nametapes on soldiers' uniforms. Since then, she has written steadily in many genres, and is the co-author of two nonfiction books, one on the circus and the other on starting a newspaper. She has been involved in various small-scale publishing ventures, taught expository writing at Harvard, and raised three daughters.