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.
November 24, 1998 - St. Paul writer Patricia Hampl has received another big honor--She's won a Pushcart Prize for one of her short stories. Hampl is better known for her memoirs A Romantic Education and Virgin Time and her two volumes of poetry. In 1990 she received a McArthur Genius grant. The prize-winning story called "The Bill Collector's Vacation" originally appeared in the literary journal Ploughshares last fall. The Pushcart anthologies pull together the best stories, poems and essays published by small presses in a given year. Hampl says winning a Pushcart means a lot more people may actually read her story.
November 25, 1998 - Katherine Lanpher's guests after ten say men and women need not be in opposition. Join in when Katherine talks with Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, co-authors of the new book, "The Maiden King."
November 26, 1998 - On this Midday Thanksgiving Day call-in program, former Star Tribune columnist Jim Klobuchar visits the MPR studios to discuss his book, Pursued By Grace.
December 8, 1998 - Those who erroneously think of books as simply words on pages between two covers might consider visiting the Minnesota Center For Book Arts in Minneapolis. The MCBA's first juried exhibition of "artist books" is on display, redefining in an age of desktop publishing and digital printing, what a book can be. Minnesota Public Radio's Chris Roberts reports.
December 8, 1998 - Those who erroneously think of books as simply words on pages between two covers might consider visiting the Minnesota Center For Book Arts in Minneapolis. The MCBA's first juried exhibition of "artist books" is on display, redefining in an age of desktop publishing and digital printing, what a book can be.
January 12, 1999 - In this sampling of opinion on the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton, which starts Thursday, we hear from some prominent Minnesotans: writer Bill Holm, former Senator Dave Durenberger, playwright Kim Hines and financier Irwin Jacobs.
January 12, 1999 - Arguments in the senate trial of President Clinton begin Thursday. We've been hearing from politicians, pundits, pollsters and the public about the trial, so we decided to put the question to a few prominent Minnesotans: Financier Irwin Jacobs says he's disgusted with the situation, and he wants Clinton removed from office.
January 18, 1999 - The remarks of Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University, at this morning's annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast, sponsored by the General Mills Foundation and the United Negro College Fund.
January 27, 1999 - In Ian McEwan's Booker Prize winning novel "Amsterdam", opens with the funeral of a society woman attended by her husband, a publisher, and three of her former lovers; a composer, a newspaper editor and a high level politician, the British Foreign Secretary.
February 3, 1999 - A Twin Cities speech by National Public Radio host Ray Suarez. He spoke at Macalester College about the history and future of American cities. Ray is writing a book due out in May, titled The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration.