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.
March 8, 1996 - Ann Daly Goodwin on expectations of girls and women, about history books and a childhood conversation that taught her an important lesson.
March 8, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe interviews Elizabeth Himelstein, dialect coach for the Coen brothers’ film “Fargo,” who discusses the importance of accent in expressing regionalism through the sound of language. Himelstein breaks down the dialect developed for film.
March 11, 1996 - Hour 2 of Midmorning featuring Voices of Minnesota; Bill Frenzel, Republican activist. Beth Gilleland speaks on Francis Clayton and Civil Ceremony and Claudia Wilkens on Eleanor Roosevelt: Excursions.
March 11, 1996 -
March 15, 1996 -
March 16, 1996 -
March 19, 1996 -
March 20, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe presents the Second Annual Minnesota Public Radio Snowman Burning. Program celebrates winter’s demise and the coming of spring with poetry from listeners, music from the Cafe Accordion Orchestra, weather with Mark Seeley, ritual tales from Brandi Parisi, the humor of Kevin Kling, and the ritual burning of an eight foot snowman with color commentary from MPR’s Dan Olson.
March 23, 1996 -
March 25, 1996 - On this Voices of Minnesota segment, Catherine Winter interviews Justine Kerfoot, an author notable for her stories about the Boundary Waters. Kerfoot speaks to her experiences of wanting to be a doctor and not being able to pursue it because of the Great Depression, and her work as a hunter, fisher, and guide at her family's lodge in Gunflint, Minnesota.