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 3, 1998 - Live broadcast of the Carlson Lecture, featuring Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. He is speaking at Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota. Before the speech, MPR host Dan Olson will be speaking with Steven Feinstein, acting director of the University of Minnnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
November 10, 1998 - "Jackpine Bob" Cary, an author and amateur sledder from Ely, talks about the experience of dog sledding as the state's mushers and sled dogs are gearing up for another season of racing. Cary published a book on sled dogs titled "Born to Pull," which is also discussed.
November 16, 1998 - Logging isn't the job it used to be. A century ago, 30 thousand loggers were at work in the Minnesota woods. Today there are fewer than a thousand, using high-tech machines to supply the state's multi-billion dollar wood-products industry.
November 17, 1998 - Though old-growth forests were long gone, Minnesota's timber industry revived in the 1980s when new technology made the ubiquitous aspen tree a desired commodity. For a decade Minnesota had the fastest-growing timber trade in the country.
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: Patricia Hampl's story "The Bill Collector's Vacation."
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.