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.
May 28, 2001 - If you're on your way back from a long weekend at the lake- a little sad thinking about the work week ahead- don't despair, your trip to the northwoods isn't over yet. Minnesota author Douglas Wood is out with a new book about an island on sprawling Rainy lake near the Canadian border. Wood owns the island, and the small cabin a local craftsman built there in 1925. Woods book, "Fawn Island," is a collection of essays that explores how the wilderness retreat has shaped Wood's innermost thoughts and his view of the larger world. In the book, he writes "Fawn Island is a rugged but poetic outcrop of granite in the heart of the northwoods." He told Minnesota Public Radio's Lorna Benson that his rustic cabin reflects that landscape.
May 28, 2001 - A Common Place Memorial Day special. The program is the story of four World War II chaplains who went down together with their torpedoed ship in 1943. Plus a conversation with Bruce Weigl, a Vietnam veteran who writes poetry.
May 28, 2001 - If you're on your way back from a long weekend at the lake- a little sad thinking about the work week ahead- don't despair, your trip to the northwoods isn't over yet. Minnesota author Douglas Wood is out with a new book about an island on sprawling Rainy lake near the Canadian border. Wood owns the island, and the small cabin a local craftsman built there in 1925. Woods book, "Fawn Island," is a collection of essays that explores how the wilderness retreat has shaped Wood's innermost thoughts and his view of the larger world.
May 29, 2001 - The final Pen Pals lecture series featuring Wisconsin author Jane Hamilton. Two of her books The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World were Oprah books.
June 1, 2001 - Northeastern Minnesota outdoorswoman and resort owner Justine Kerfoot died yesterday in Grand Marais. She was ninty-five. In the northwoods of Minnesota, everybody knows the name Justine Kerfoot. Her family bought the Gunflint Lodge nearly 70 years ago. Her 70 years worth of stories: the time she fell through the ice with her dog team; the time she lassoed a moose calf; the time her little son dropped a kitten down the outhouse - those stories are collected in her books, "Woman of the Boundary Waters and Gunflint".
June 7, 2001 - Postcard from a Lynching, an MPR special report about an ugly chapter in Duluth's history. Then Michael Fedo, author of The Lynchings in Duluth, and Augsburg College History Professor Bill Green discuss the documentary and respond to listener comments and questions.
June 7, 2001 - "Take the advice of no one." This is the credo of August Kleinmann, 78 year old immigrant, self-made millionaire and central character of Ethan Canin's new novel "Carry Me Across the Water." Canin is currently on the faculty of the Iowa Writers Workshop, although he's probably the only MD on the staff. He took a brief sojourn into medicine as a backup in case his writing career failed to take off. Canin told Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Crann the novel is the story of his hero's journey to the US and then his journey of atonement late in life, when he reaches out to the family of a Japanese soldier he killed during World War Two.
June 12, 2001 - Misti Snow writes Mindworks, the Star Tribune's monthly forum for young writers. She shares what she's been hearing from kids for the past 18 years on Midday.
June 26, 2001 - Most Minnesotans know what the word Minnesota means. It means "sky-tinted water." It's a combination of the Dakota Indian words "mini," which means water, and "sota," which means somewhat clouded. But do you know how your city or town got its name, or that nearby lake or river? The Minnesota Historical Society recently published the third edition of the book, "Minnesota Place Names," which explains how cities and other places got their names. Ann Regan is the managing editor of the Minnesota Historical Society Press.
July 9, 2001 - MPR’s Elizabeth Stawicki presents report on attempts to save the Ojibwe language. Report includes various interviews, including Jim Northrup. At one time more than 300 American Indian languages were spoken in the U.S. But with each passing generation, many of the indigenous languages have died; others are on the verge of disappearing. With that in mind, tribes from northern Wisconsin and Minnesota are trying to keep their Ojibwe language from going silent and along the way gain new insight into how their ancestors viewed the world.