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.
April 25, 1997 - Kent Nerburn reads a selection from "A Haunting Reverence."
April 28, 1997 - David Parker started with an interest in child labor in the United States, tracking kids in the many jobs they do here, from State Fair booths to fast food restaurants. But as photographer and physician, Parker found his focus shifting overseas, and he's compiled a photo essay documenting the far worse conditions for working kids in the Third World. Children reportedly make up 11-percent of the workforce in some Asian countries, 17-percent in Africa, and maybe 25-percent in Latin America. David Parker is a photographer and physician with the Minnesota Health Department. His photos of child labor have been displayed at the U.S.Capitol and Department of Labor, and will be published this summer in a book called "Stolen Dreams".
May 1, 1997 - Hundreds of people gathered in Fargo today to observe the National Day of Prayer. The mayors of Fargo and Moorhead, pastors from Grand Forks and Wahpeton, and teachers and students prayed for strength to rebuild their flood-damaged communities.
May 2, 1997 - Commentator Susan Carol Hauser on the passing of Hale-Bopp. She's the author of "Full Moon: Reflections on Turning Fifty.
May 9, 1997 - From "I've Always Meant to Tell You: Letters to Our Mothers - An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers." Edited by Constance Warloe. Published by Pocket Books, 1997.
May 16, 1997 -
May 20, 1997 - Public and private landholders are challenging Chippewa Indian's plans to take fish and other game in eastern Minnesota, under terms of an 1837 treaty. But miles north of the region under contention, Chippewa Indians have been harvesting fish and wild rice and hunting moose and deer on public lands with little fanfare, and no public protests.
May 23, 1997 - "My First Trip Up North" by John Sonnen, a retired real estate agent and writer who lives in St. Paul. We heard an excerpt from a memoir published in "The Minnesota Volunteer," the magazine of the Department of Natural Resources.
May 23, 1997 -
May 26, 1997 - A Voices of Minnesota interview with Joe Gomer, one of the Tuskegee Airman during World War II. Also Walter Benjamin of Hamline University, author of "War & Reflection." He looks back on his experiences as a member of the Navy in World War II and the ongoing meaning it has in his life.