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.
October 3, 2005 - Playwright August Wilson has died of cancer. The Pulitzer-Prize winner rose to national prominence while living in Saint Paul during the 1980's. Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcoxen reports.
October 3, 2005 - One of the great voices of American theater has fallen silent. August Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one-time St. Paulite, died of liver cancer Sunday in Seattle. He was 60 years old.
October 6, 2005 - Playwright Edward Albee, best known for writing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," says art should be dangerous. Albee speaks live from the Westminster Town Hall Forum in downtown Minneapolis.
October 10, 2005 - It's a busy week for Neil Gaiman. He has a new bestselling book, Anansi Boys, and this Friday a film that he wrote opens. It's called Mirrormask. He's not just a novelist and screenwriter...he's also the author of the comic book series The Sandman. Gaiman is a local boy of sorts. Although he's English, he found himself settled outside the Twin Cities about a decade ago.
October 12, 2005 - From one-room chapels to grand cathedrals, churches all over the state are part of Minnesota's landscape. Now nearly 100 of those churches are showcased in a new book. It's full of images from a wide variety of denominations and many different architectural styles. The book is by writer Jon Hassler and photographer Doug Ohman, who traveled the state in all four seasons to photograph the churches.
October 17, 2005 - The late playwright August Wilson now has a theater named after him on Broadway in New York City. Wilson lived in St. Paul during the 90s when he wrote many of his most famous plays. He died of liver cancer on October 2nd at the age of 60. The August Wilson Theater is the first on the Great White Way to be named after an African-American.
October 19, 2005 - What do baseball great Lou Gehrig and the biblical history of the modern-day Middle East have in common? Well, admittedly, not much, except that two nationally renowned authors who wrote books on those subjects were in town Sunday to talk about their books.Jonathan Eig, author of "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig," and Bruce Feiler, who wrote "Where God Was Born: A Journey By Land to the Roots of Religion."
October 24, 2005 - Midmorning host Kerri Miller talks with author Joan Didion about grieving and memory. Joan Didion, author of "The Year of Magical Thinking." Didion has written five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction.
October 24, 2005 - Midmorning host Kerri Miller talks with author Joan Didion about grieving and memory. Joan Didion, author of "The Year of Magical Thinking." Didion has written five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction.
October 26, 2005 - A new play that makes its regional debut in the Twin Cities later this week examines the War in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the political strategies of the Bush administration. The play is called "The God of Hell" and is done by playwright Sam Shepard. It looks at what could happen if those in power became a little too comfortable.