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 29, 1996 -
December 5, 1996 - Novelist Umberto Eco's latest book "The Island of the Day Before" tells the strange tale of a 17th century Italian adventurer who is marooned on a ship straddling the international dateline. As with his other novels, "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault Pendulum" Eco entwines an intricate story with musings on history philosophy and what he calls "lunatic science." Eco is in the Twin Cities to read from his book. Tomorrow he travels to the St John's University in Collegeville to speak, and to visit the monastic library. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he researched "The Island of the Day Before" for five years and even went to remote Pacific islands to experience life on the international dateline.
December 6, 1996 -
December 7, 1996 - This time of year makes many people think about family - their own family and the relationships within that define it. Commentator Gary Eustice thinks there are ways generations both weaken and stregthen us.
December 9, 1996 - Hour 2 of Midmorning, featuring Voices of Minnesota with Barbara Frey, outgoing executive director of the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and conversation with Minnesota writer Mary Casanova.
December 9, 1996 -
December 11, 1996 - Twin Cities playwright Kevin Kling takes to the stage of the Jungle Theatre in Uptown Minneapolis tomorrow night for the annual seasonal run of sacred and possibly heretical Christmas stories. It was a Freudian slip, I swear, when I asked Kevin to explain the show, and I referred to it as Fear and LOATHING in Minneapolis.
December 13, 1996 - An essay on "look at me" houses by Voices from the Heartland contributor Mike Perry.
December 14, 1996 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews author Lee Smith about using Christmas letters as an idea for creating a novel…with recipes, of course.
December 14, 1996 - Lessons passed from one generation to another are an important part of the continuity of family. However, commentator Ann Dunn recalls one time when the lesson was that of disappointment.