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.
February 13, 2003 - William George, former Medtronic CEO, talks about his experiences while working in an industry in which the products themselves may have ethical ramifications. He discusses how an individual and a leader sets the standards for the work that is done around him. How much should be expected from the people who direct the company in terms of their responsibility to the community?
February 24, 2003 - MPR’s Brandt Williams reports on local storyteller Nothando Zulu, and her work during Black History Month. February is the month when all Americans are encouraged to learn more about the culture and history of African Americans. Schools, libraries and other organizations ask African American scholars, artists and professionals to be part of their Black History Month events. Nothando Zulu, hasn't had a day off all month.
March 12, 2003 - Minneapolis writer Alison McGhee describes her new novel as, "very sad". Her novel is titled, "Was it Beautiful?" It's the story of William T. Jones, a man struggling with the suicide of his son, his divorce, and the loss of his job. McGhee based the new book on the biblical story of Job, the man who lost everything as God tested his faith. Allison McGhee told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr that she set the story in the Adirondacks, at the turn of the 20th century. She grew up there, and wanted to set the story among the characters who lived back in the woods.
March 12, 2003 - A rebroadcast of Talking Volumes event with author Robert Alexander, known locally as R.D. Zimmerman, talking with Katherine Lanpher about his novel The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar. The book is based on historical research and suggests what might have happened before and after the assassination of Russia's ruling Romanov family in Siberia in 1918.
March 19, 2003 - Playwright John Guare talks with Guthrie Theater Artistic Director, Joe Dowling, about his writing, life, and play "Six Degrees of Separation" at the Guthrie Theater March 1st through April 6th.
March 25, 2003 - MPR’s Gary Eichten interviews former DFL Senator Eugene McCarthy discusses his world views and the current situation in U.S.-Iraq War.
March 27, 2003 - As we try to understand what's happening in Iraq right now, one Minnesotan watches and listens with a unique perspective. John Hartnett is a veteran of the first Gulf War. He was a Military Police Platoon Commander with the Marines. His job was to round up prisoners on the battlefield and take them to POW compounds in Saudi Arabia. John Hartnett has written a book about his experiences. He says the job was sometimes very stressful.
April 11, 2003 - Northfield native Siri Hustvedt says her new book called "What I loved," began with a single image. An naked, obese woman's corpse lying on a bed. The image doesn't appear in the novel. But Hustvedt says it launched the process of writing and re-writing which lasted several years. The image morphed into a series of portraits by an artist. One of them attracts the attention of an art historian. These two are the book's central characters. The men become friends, and the novel follows their lives. We learn how their families are changed by their loves and losses over a period of thirty years. Siri Hustvedt told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr it took a great deal of work to achieve the effect.
April 11, 2003 - On this Word of Mouth program, MPR’s Chris Roberts looks at the Penumbra production of August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis hosting the fifth annual American pottery festival, a play adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street” novel, and “Dancing with Shadows” performance art.
April 11, 2003 - Northfield native Siri Hustvedt says her new book called "What I Loved," began with a single image. An naked, obese woman's corpse lying on a bed. The image doesn't appear in the novel. But Hustvedt says it launched the process of writing and re-writing which lasted several years. The image morphed into a series of portraits by an artist. One of them attracts the attention of an art historian. These two are the book's central characters. The men become friends, and the novel follows their lives. We learn how their families are changed by their loves and losses over a period of thirty years.