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.
February 16, 1996 -
February 20, 1996 -
February 22, 1996 -
February 23, 1996 -
February 29, 1996 - MPR's Marianne Combs speaks with musician Georgia Ann Hunter, painter Patricia Canelake, and poet Louis Jenkins, as they gathered with other artists at the Lake Superior Center in Duluth to share their work and talk about how the lake has influenced their art.
March 1, 1996 -
March 5, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe interviews Eugene McCarthy on Democrat caucus history and his concern of how they are controlled through ongoing rule changes. McCarthy also discusses the Republican presidential campaign and quotes a poem.
March 8, 1996 - Ann Daly Goodwin on expectations of girls and women, about history books and a childhood conversation that taught her an important lesson.
March 8, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe interviews Elizabeth Himelstein, dialect coach for the Coen brothers’ film “Fargo,” who discusses the importance of accent in expressing regionalism through the sound of language. Himelstein breaks down the dialect developed for film.
March 11, 1996 - Hour 2 of Midmorning featuring Voices of Minnesota; Bill Frenzel, Republican activist. Beth Gilleland speaks on Francis Clayton and Civil Ceremony and Claudia Wilkens on Eleanor Roosevelt: Excursions.