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 6, 1999 - This week, our Mainstreet reporting team looks at Minnesota's 'hidden' population -- rural minorities. In some Minnesota counties, all the residents are white. In some cities and towns, the minority population has just begun to grow. It's a change that enriches life for some, and threatens others. The recent Supreme Court treaty affirmation capped a decade of friction between American Indians and their non-Indian neighbors. We're now left to digest not only the impact of the decision, but also the shouting, defensiveness and political manuevering it followed.
May 7, 1999 - For the most part, BEARS have a bad reputation among humans...and a recent bear attack in Wisconsin only adds to that general disdain. On Monday, a bear attacked a Cameron man in his backyard after he tried to rescue his poodle from the bear's jaws. The man suffered puncture wounds and claw marks. The dog has not been found. But for former Minnesotan Jack Becklund, bears are not unpredictable, dangerous creatures. Becklund recounts his unusually friendly experiences with black bears in his new book "Summers With the Bears: Six Seasons in the North Woods."
May 7, 1999 - Morning Edition speaks with authors John Camp and Ron Handberg. Camp, who publishes under the name John Sandford, has a new book coming out next week called Certain Prey. Handberg's new book Dead Silence is already in stores.
May 10, 1999 - A Twin Cities speech by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen. She was the featured speaker at last month's Pen Pals Lecture series sponsored by the Library Foundation of Hennepin County. Anna Quindlen titled her speech, and her most recent book, How Reading Changed My Life.
May 13, 1999 -
May 13, 1999 -
May 18, 1999 - While it seems we're constantly assailed with stories of writers being offered huge advances on the strength of a single sample chapter: the journey to being a published author is often long and lonely. Just ask Minneapolis writer Wendy McCormick who labored for years, and crossed an ocean, before she finally saw her name in print. McCormick's first book, a picture book for children, is appropriately enough, about travelling.
May 21, 1999 - The Twins haven't been doing so well recently. But as commentator Nanci Olesen has found out, recently winning isn't necessarily the important thing.
May 26, 1999 - With his stack of vetoes behind him, Governor Ventura has launched his national promotional tour for his autobiography "I Ain't Got Time To Bleed". This evening he'll appear on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Minnesota Public Radio's Laura McCallum joins me now from the NBC studios where taping will get underway in a little while.
May 31, 1999 - The May edition of our "Voices of Minnesota" series, featuring novelist Jon Hassler, Regents Professor at St. John's University and Ian Barbour, the Carleton College professor who recently won the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.