This collection encompasses 50-plus years of interviews, readings, speeches, and reports on the vibrant literary scene in Minnesota. Not only home to giants F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, our state has an array of incredible contemporary poets, novelists, and playwrights. Their words make up majority of this collection.
Repeatedly being named the “Most Literate City in the United States,” the Twin Cities has played host to numerous visiting national writers via book tours, festivals, and lectures. Many recordings of these are also included.
This project was funded by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
October 4, 1996 - It's well-known and shameful, that the United States kept people of Japanese descent in prison camps during World War Two. A growing number of scholars say there were also internment camps for up to a few thousand Germans. Scholars, like Saint Olaf professor La Vern Rippley, say there were at least fifty camps across the United States -- the closest to Minnesota in Fort Lincoln, North Dakota and Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. As of June 30, 1945, there were supposedly 21-hundred Germans in them. Professor Rippley says the reason these facts are not well-known is wrapped-up in the Unites States' attitudes about its Germans, one of the biggest ethnic groups in the country and the most-populous in Minnesota.
October 4, 1996 - If you are racing on your way TO or FROM work, careening through a list of errands, conversing on your cell phone, commentator Jim Baden has a few words for you. Baden, publisher of the Mille Lacs Messenger newspaper says it's important to remember, there are still places in Minnesota where cell phones and fax machines are - well, unusual.
October 10, 1996 - In high-profile political races, up to two-thirds of a campaign budget might be spent on advertising, most of it on TV. With so much riding on these ads, the way a thirty-second spot is designed and delivered is something not taken lightly.
October 11, 1996 -
October 11, 1996 - The only woman ever elected to Congress from Minnesota has died. Coya Knutson was 84 when died of kidney failure at an Edina nursing home yesterday. Knutson was elected to the Minnesota Legislature in 1950 and to Congress in 1954. Knutson was perhaps better known for LEAVING office than winning it. In 1958, when she was campaigning for re-election, her husband, Andy Knutson, wrote a letter saying he wanted his wife to come back home. The letter was picked up by newspapers, and was blamed for her narrow defeat. Gretchen Beito, of Theif River Falls wrote a book about Knutson's political career, called "Coya Come Home".
October 11, 1996 - The dream of many writers is to be able to blast off a draft of a book, send it to a publisher, who decides to rush it into print backed by a huge publicity campaign. Of course, the reality is usually very different, with would-be authors having to develop a thick skin to handle repeated rejection. It's a story familiar to Megan Brown of St Cloud, who after a huge struggle is now awaiting the release of her second book. What is amazing about Megan is her age- she's just nine years old. This weekend Megan will be featured nationwide on the Nickelodeon Cable Channel's "Nick News".
October 13, 1996 -
October 13, 1996 - It's a mystery, a love story and just a plain eerie tale. Siri Hustvedt's new book "The Enchantment of Lily Dahl" is set in Webster, Minnesota, a town that appears to be ordinary. Siri Hustvedt and her title character Lily Dahl share many things in common, both spent time as waitresses and both have lived in small Minnesota towns. Siri Hustvedt says her hometown of Northfield, Minnesota served as a model for the fictional town of Webster.
October 14, 1996 -
October 14, 1996 - On this Odd Jobs segment, MPR’s Tim Kelly interviews Neal Henry Lawrence, an 88-year-old monk from Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, who's lived in Tokyo for almost four decades, and is a pioneer in the writing of Tanka in English.