Frank McCourt first performed in Pittsburgh in 1985. Next year, he makes his eighth appearance here.

Maya Angelou drops by just as often. On May 16, the author's one-woman show opens for its ninth time in the city since 1994.

David Sedaris is catching up with them. The popular narrator of his bizarre life stories sold out the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland last night, the fifth time he's tread the boards here.

What brings these authors/performers back to Pittsburgh again and again?

For starters, they're famous. Presenting organizations can bank on them to sell lots of tickets and bring in money, even though these three speakers are paid more than $30,000 each for their hour upon the stage.

Although Ms. Angelou, who turns 79 tomorrow, hasn't written a significant literary work in years, focusing now on her multi-volume autobiography, she is an inspirational performer and iconic cultural figure. Her 1969 book, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," is a standard text in most schools.

In at least four of Ms. Angelou's performances here, she used that book as the starting point for her program, a mix of autobiographical material, inspirational phrases and singing.

In some respects, the lecture circuit reflects the music industry's formula of turning classic artists who no longer churn out hits but continue to tour -- the Beach Boys and Steve Miller, for example -- into cash cows.

The Pitt Program Council, a student organization at the University of Pittsburgh, has brought Ms. Angelou to town five times since 1994. She was here twice in 1998, once for Pitt and again for the national YWCA convention.

She's also done benefits for the Carnegie Library (2002) and the Holy Family Institute (2000).

Her appearance at the Benedum May 16, however, is not by invitation, so she'll have to earn her fees through ticket sales. The prices range from $79.50 to $39.50.

Ms. Angelou hired a booking agency to manage her touring, Unique Lives & Experiences in Toronto, that has arranged engagements for her in 11 cities this spring.

Its clients include Margaret Trudeau; Goldie Hawn; Cherie Booth, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair; and popular historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The booking agency said Ms. Angelou, unlike its other clients, will not take questions from the audience after her show.

Mr. Sedaris, 50, has built his large following from a series of best-selling collections of humorous, but apparently embellished, anecdotes about growing up gay in the redneck South and encounters with bizarre people in adulthood.

Enhancing his popularity are his frequent appearances on National Public Radio and in the New Yorker magazine.

In Mr. Sedaris' previous performances here, he was greeted with almost rapturous applause and big laughs. Only once, when he unleashed a torrent of profanity at a Drue Heinz Lectures appearance, was there a protest when several women left the hall.

Mr. Sedaris has led a charmed career, living well in France for several years after struggling in a series of odd jobs, returning to the United States for his annual lecture tour. But a sour note was sounded last month in a story in the New Republic by Alex Heard, an editor at Outdoor Magazine.

"This American Lie" poked big holes into Mr. Sedaris' assertions that his stories are true. Even Mr. Sedaris admitted as much to Mr. Heard, although last week the comedian was backtracking and branding Mr. Heard "incompetent" in a Newsday story.

Mr. Heard, however, says he's still a Sedaris fan; he just thinks the writer has been disingenuous about labeling his anecdotes "nonfiction."

"People are attached to Sedaris because he's funny and because the stories he tells resonate with the baby boom childhoods many of us had," Mr. Heard said last week.

"I had never really read all his stuff before I got curious about the truth/fiction ratio in his work, and I like a lot of it," he added.

Yet, he said Mr. Sedaris' "buttery-smooth narration is part of what got me thinking about all this, because it was punctuated by jarring departures. Some of the events sounded bogus."

Mr. Heard believes that "it's fine with me" if Mr. Sedaris continues to tell his funny stories, but he should call them "fiction and let the marketplace decide if [they] still measured up."

For examples, Mr. Heard cites such episodes as "c.o.g.," "A Plague of Tics" and "Dix Hill" as largely fiction.

"I wish Sedaris would try reading 'Dix Hill' in front of a live audience and see if they buy it," Mr. Heard said in an e-mail last week. "If they do, he could follow up by selling them shares in a scheme to rescue 'monies' from a bank in Nigeria."

Mr. McCourt, 76, has heard the same charges against his trio of memoirs, particularly "Angela's Ashes," the huge 1997 best-seller.

Before the retired New York schoolteacher became a writer, he and his brother, Malachy, did a nightclub act called "A Couple of Blackguards," that brought them to Etna's defunct Blarney Stone in '85.

Mr. McCourt's account of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland, found skeptics who said he couldn't possibly remember incidents and conversations when he was an infant, then repeat them with such certitude 60 years later.

He maintains that "Angela's Ashes" and its successors, " 'Tis" and "Teacher Man" are true.

"I've got witnesses," he said.

Mr. McCourt made his first stop in the area as a writer Dec. 4, 1997, at Seton Hill College in Greensburg.

He made three visits in 1999, including a two-night stand for the Heinz Lectures in March because there was such a demand for tickets.

Mr. McCourt also spoke at the dedication of the O'Reilly Theater in December.

Other previous appearances: April 23, 2003; Nov. 18, 2005; and March 6, 2006.

If you've managed to miss him, he's on the Pittsburgh Speakers Series schedule March 26.