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.
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.
February 5, 1999 - MPR’s John Rabe interviews Garrison Keillor on his new satirical book, Me, that seems to parody Jesse Ventura.
February 9, 1999 - Broadcast of Monday's Westminster Town Hall Forum address by Archbishop Desmond Tutu - he spoke about peace and reconciliation.
February 19, 1999 - MPR’s Katherine Lanpher talks with poets Robert Bly and William Duffy about their adventures in poetry - both then and now.
February 26, 1999 - Jim Knipfel has walked on the dark side of life. As a young man, he was a heavy drinker, and a petty thief prone to start fights. He spent time in psychiatric wards after multiple suicide attempts. Finally, in his late twenties he started settling down, landing a job as a newspaper columnist, getting married and moving away from his wilder drinking buddies. But then Knipfel entered a literal dark side. His eyesight had always been poor, but doctors told him that he was going to be blind by age 35. Now almost completely blind, he recounts his wild years and his loss of vision in his new blackly comedic memoir Slackjaw.
March 5, 1999 - Novelist Jon Hassler is best known for his fictional tales of ordinary people who experience extraordinary things. Hassler brings those same elements and even a few familiar characters to his latest literary pursuit, a darkly comedic play set in the small Midwestern town of Staggerford, the same town he wrote about in his very first novel.