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 31, 1996 - The 1950s are generally regarded as the sleepy years in our history; the age of Ike Eisenhower, and the elevation of the ideals of the "American Dream". While many Americans were comfortably conforming in the post-war boom years, a group of writers and artists who called themselves "the beat generation" were rebelling. They produced some of the grittiest, ground-breaking work of the 20th-century. A new exhibition at the Walker Art Center, called "Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965," seeks to capture the beat movement in all its complexity.
June 5, 1996 -
June 6, 1996 -
June 7, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe talks with Gordon Parks about his influential film career. Parks discusses “The Learning Tree,” amongst other works.
June 7, 1996 - Krista Parker was the 1996 Minnesota State A (not AA as announced) Highschool Storytelling champion from Murray County Central, Slayton.
June 14, 1996 -
June 20, 1996 - When you listen to news reports on the radio or television, or read the local paper, what do you expect? What IS the news of the day? Jim Baden, editor of the Mille Lacs Messenger, thinks the news he puts on the front page of the Messenger IS different from other places - further more, he thinks it SHOULD be.
June 21, 1996 - A Saint Cloud theatre company is dedicating its entire next season to the works of Minnesota playwrights and composers, an idea that could prove risky if theatregoers are reluctant to try new or unknown plays, some never before performed. But the New Tradition Theatre Company has a ten-year history of tackling innovative projects. The theatre has survived leaking roofs, several moves, box-office bombs, and the departure of its two founders, somehow always managing to pay its talent as the only professional theatre in outstate Minnesota.
July 5, 1996 -
July 5, 1996 -