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.
November 1, 1996 -
November 4, 1996 - As we all walk into our local polling places to cast our vote, commentator Ann Daly Goodwin suggests we rethink all this energy going into improving voter turnout.
November 8, 1996 - Essay on hunting later collected in "Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map by Barton Sutter", published October 1998 by University of Minnesota Press.
November 8, 1996 - Minnesota has more timberwolves in the wild than ever before, and they're covering more ground. Once limited to the arrowhead region, wolves are now establishing packs as far south as Camp Ripley. As the firearms deer season opens tomorrow, hunters in central Minnesota have a better chance than ever to see a wolf in the woods; and some of them aren't happy about what they see as "the competition."
November 11, 1996 - The first feature-film created entirely in Minnesota will be released in theatres this month, but you probably won't see it. "The Visionary" was scripted, filmed and scored locally, with Minnesota actors, stuntmen and crew.
November 15, 1996 - Voices from the Heartland presents poet Diane Glancy reading "Snow," which is a reflection on the Halloween blizzard of 1991.
November 15, 1996 - The words of longtime writer and political activist Meridel Le Sueur, who died yesterday at the age of 96. Le Seur objected to being called one of Minnesota's "treasures" -- that's a patriarchal term, she said -- but she was regarded that way. Meridel Le Sueur chronicled the suffering of women and families during the Great Depression. She was a blacklisted social activist, stuntwoman and - for a time - the voice of Betty Crocker.
November 18, 1996 - Hour 2 of Midmorning featuring Voices of Minnesota, an interview from the MPR archives with Meridel Le Sueur, who died at the age of 96. Le Sueur was a writer, stuntwoman, social activist and much more. Also featured is Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle and other bestselling novels about women of the South, is out with her fifth mystery novel co-written with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown. "Murder, She Meowed " probes the depths of human depravity and the heights of feline genius."
November 19, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger reports on new children’s comic book which highlights the history of the Mille Lacs Ojibwe Band. The book, "A Hero's Voice," looks at broken treaties, important figures in Ojibwe history, and the spiritual tie between the tribe and the lake.
November 20, 1996 -