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.
August 31, 1996 -
September 2, 1996 - Leif Enger presents Mainstreet Radio report on efforts by filmmaker John Hansen to translate Ole Edvart Rølvaag’s novel Giants in the Earth onto the big screen. It is a task that has been attempted in the past, but never realized.
September 4, 1996 - As students and teachers across Minnesota return to school this week, commentator Ann Daly Goodwin remembers the years she spent teaching high school students...and the lessons SHE learned from THEM.
September 6, 1996 -
September 8, 1996 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews Emilie Buchwald, co-founder and publisher of Milkweed Editions, about nature essays. Milkweed Editions hopes the current debate over the use of the Boundary Waters will inspire people to put pen to paper and submit their writing in their essay contest.
September 9, 1996 - Part of the Voices of Minnesota series with Rhoda Gilman, historian. Arne Fogel on Billie Holiday and Odd Jobs - motorcycle patrol officer. Hour 2.
September 9, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe interviews Irish poet Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Heaney speaks about the importance of radio in his life. Heaney also reads numerous poems.
September 10, 1996 - Staff at Milkweed Editions , the Minneapolis-based publishing house got quite a shock last year. They donated a thousand children's books to Twin Cities fourth and fifth graders, only to discover that the children couldn't read the books. Many were three grade levels behind in their reading. And so in what might be a natural for a publisher, Milkweed got into the business of promoting literacy. But as Mary Stucky reports, they've taken an approach that's unique in the nation.
September 13, 1996 -
September 17, 1996 - Larry Millett, who writes for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, is best known as the author of Lost Twin Cities, a romantic and wrenching tribute to the architectural majesty of Minneapolis and Saint Paul eliminated by the wrecking ball. It's not surprising that Millett is a lifelong fan of Conan Doyle's adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which evoke long-gone times and morals. He saw all the movies and read all the stories, and has now written his own Holmes adventure: "Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon", which puts Holmes and Watson at the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894.