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 23, 2002 - An All Things Considered/Mainstreet Radio profile of author and poet BIll Holm, his small home town Minneota, and literary history of nearby Marshall. Program includes interview with Holm, various readings performed by MPR staff, and musical elements.
May 28, 2002 - Author and activist Randall Robinson speaks at the University of Minnesota's Nommo forum about slavery reparations. Robinson is the author of two influential books on the subject: "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," and "The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other."
May 31, 2002 - Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro speaks at Ruminator Books in Minneapolis, recorded last week. Caro, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his book "The Power Broker," is promoting his latest work, "Master of the Senate," the third book in a biographical series about president Lyndon Baines Johnson.
June 11, 2002 - St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter and architecture critic Larry Millett is retiring after 30 years with the paper. Millett began writing a column on architecture and design in the mid-1980's, after a prairie school exhibit at Landmark Center stirred up an interest in architecture he had had since childhood. In the late 1980's, Millett wrote a series of columns on historic buildings the city had torn down, which he turned into a book called "Lost Twin Cities." Millett published his last column today. He says when he started at the paper, downtown St. Paul was in the throws of massive downtown urban renewal.
June 28, 2002 - Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy, joins us by phone to talk about her new book, "Profiles in Courage for Our Time."
July 3, 2002 - Famed American playwright Arthur Miller is in Minneapolis this week preparing for the world premiere of his latest play at the Guthrie Theater. Miller is best known for his plays "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible" - this is the first time he's premiered a play in Minnesota.
July 15, 2002 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews Minnesota author Brian Malloy about his debut novel "The Year of Ice," which is set in the Twin Cities in 1978. The story revolves around 17-year-old Kevin Doyle, a boy struggling with the death of his mother, his isolation from his father, and coming to terms with his sexuality.
July 16, 2002 - Prior Lake, Minnesota is the inspiration for the fictional town of Acorn Lake, Minnesota in Jean Harfenist's new book "A Brief History of the Flood." The book is a collection of short stories set in the 1960's and centered around the Anderson family. The stories follow the developement of the Anderson's daughter, Lillian--from young child to young adult. Lillian is a small town girl dealing with an alcoholic father and a mother who views the world like a romance novel. Lillian is also trying to avoid her mother's mistakes and is focusing on becoming a self-sufficient working woman. Harfenist grew up in Prior Lake and says Minnesota is an essential element to "A Brief History of the Flood." Jean Harfenist is the author of "A Brief History of the Flood." The book is published by Knopf.
July 17, 2002 - A new book brings renewed attention to an historic civil rights case on the Minnesota iron range. In 1988, Lois Jenson sued Eveleth Mines for the sexual harassment she endured at work. Her case eventually altered the very nature of sexual harassment suits. Journalist Clara Bingham and attorney Laura Leedy-Gansler are the authors of "Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case the Changed Sexual Harassment Law." Both women came by the studio to discuss the case. Bingham says there is a macho culture on the range that contributed to the harassment in the mines.
July 19, 2002 - Minneapolis native Arthur Phillips novel is set in Budapest in 1990. It's called "Prague" though, because that's where the expatriate Americans in the story worry they really should be. The group includes entrepreneurs, writers and diplomats, caught in the excitement of the fall of Eastern European totalitarianism. Yet they can't shake the feeling they are missing the real action elsewhere. Arthur Phillips himself lived in the Hungarian capital in the early nineties. His novel had drawn critical acclaim for it's depiction of a unique period of recent history. "Prague" opens with some of the Americans sitting in a cafe playing "Sincerity", a game where each player makes a series of statements, only one of which is true. The players score by fooling the other players and guessing correctly when they are lying. Phillips told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr the game reveals a great deal about the players.