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 19, 2000 - As the population ages, short-term memory loss and dementia are becoming more common. Four million Americans now suffer from Alzheimers Disease. Most of those who can no longer live at home are in nursing homes; but many say there's a lack of facilities that understand how to care for dementia victims. In Meeker County, where 17 percent of the population is over 65, an entrepreneur has risked everything to start an innovative foster home for Alzheimer patients. The home, in rural Darwin, features aspects of farm life and could become a model for the future.
January 31, 2000 - A Chautauqua Lecture by the new host of NPR's Talk of the Nation-- longtime Washington Post journalist Juan Williams. The speech and his book are titled Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. The paperback goes on sale Tuesday. (Williams is also author of Eyes on the Prize.
February 4, 2000 - The running of the John Beargrease sled dog race has Commentator Nanci Olesen thinking north this weekend.
February 7, 2000 - Former NPR producer Gwen Macsai, takes on childhood, becoming an adult and the difficulties of marriage in her first book, "Lip-schtick". She turns these ordinary experiences into comic essays, examining the pain of the junior high crush, the romantic allure of carpenters, and how to train your husband. Macsai, formerly a Twin Cities resident, now lives in Chicago.
February 18, 2000 - Hear Nobel Prize Laureate and Northern Ireland political leader David Trimble's speech at a Minnesota International Center World Affairs breakfast forum in downtown Minneapolis earlier today.
February 21, 2000 - It's hard to believe with all the whizz-bang high-tech entertainments available to kids nowadays that something as simple as story telling could compete. But Judith Simundson not only competes, she wins by spinning Norwegian tales of enchantment.
February 22, 2000 - At the start of his new book, conservative onlooker David Frum assesses life in America in the year 2000. We are richer than ever before, he says, there are more jobs, and great social advancements. But it's a mistake, he says, to think the turbulent 1960s laid the entire foundation for the improvements we enjoy today. Frum is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Morning Edition, and his new book is called "How We Got Here: The Seventies the Decade that Brought You Modern Life, for Better or Worse".
February 28, 2000 - The February edition of Voices of Minnesota highlights the work of two African American women. MPR’s Stephanie Curtis interviews Mary Easter, Northfield dancer and choreographer, who discusses the political nature of her work. MPR’s Dan Olson interviews Dr. Geneva Southall, author and retired University of Minnesota Afro-American Studies history professor, who talks about her personal reflections on race, and her research on "Blind Tom" (Thomas Green Wiggins).
February 28, 2000 - Minneapolis resident Dr. Geneva Southall has written two volumes of history about the life and times of Blind Tom, a black composer. Dr. Southall is a professor emeritus of Afro-American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson about the slave who was a composer as part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series.
March 2, 2000 - A twin cities speech by author Studs Terkel. Studs spoke at Macalester College recently. His most recent book is The Spectator.