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.
July 6, 1999 - A group of artists, educators and book sellers is trying to save the boyhood home of one of Minnesota's best-known living authors. They are hoping to raise between 150 to 200-thousand dollars to move, rennovate and re-open the home of Jon Hassler. The author of "Staggerford," "A Green Journey" and many other novels is usually associated with central Minnesota because he taught at St. John's University for many years. But Hassler grew up in Plainview, a small agricultural town in southeastern Minnesota not far from the Mississippi River. His home was going to be deomolished to make way for a medical clinic, but fans of the author have managed to move it to a temporary site, while they raise money for the rennovation. A major benefit is planned for tomorrow evening. Executive Director of the Rural America Arts Partnership Ken Flies, says Hassler's house is in fairly good shape.
July 9, 1999 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger interviews Wayne Johnson, author of the crime novel "Don't Think Twice." The hero of book, Paul Two Persons, is a Ivy-League educated Chippewa, and owns a remote lodge on Lake of the Woods. Two Persons finds himself in serious trouble when he returns to the reservation he grew up on. The book relies heavily on the land and waters of northern Minnesota, and the traditions of the Indians who live there.
July 9, 1999 - Nature photographer James Brandenburg describes his reaction to viewing the aftermath of massive windstorm in the BCWA. Brandenburg lives near Ely on the edge of the Boundary Waters.
July 9, 1999 - Nature photographer James Brandenburg says it's been hard to deal with the scope of the damage to the wilderness after massive windstorm. Brandenburg lives near Ely on the edge of the Boundary Waters.
July 13, 1999 - One of the nation's most expensive -and dramatic - storage facilities for rare books is now under construction at the University of Minnesota. One collection making the move to the new facilitiy is the Kerlan Collection of children's literature, which must leave the beautiful room it's occupied for years.
July 21, 1999 - Mike Edgerly sits in for Gary Eichten. A discussion of the life and works of Ernest Hemingway, with St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial writer Doug Tice.
July 30, 1999 - A program about the western novel. Guests include Loren Estleman of the Western Writers of America and author of "The Wister Trace: Classic Novels of the American Frontier," and author and Minnesota Public Radio reporter Leif Enger.
August 12, 1999 - The harsh reality and natural beauty of ranching life is at the center of Minnesota writer Jonis Agee's latest novel "The Weight of Dreams". The book's main character is Ty Bonte--a Nebraska teenager who learns from his alcoholic father that violence is a way of life. Ty and his friend beat up two teenagers from the nearby Rosebud Indian Reservation. He decides to flee his home and the law. The book then follows Ty as he tries to find redemption and a new way of life as a horse trader in Kansas. Author Jonis Agee says the book questions whether Ty can truly find peace.
August 16, 1999 - North Dakota native and internationally known youth worker Trudi Able Peterson Hoefler, shares her firsthand experiences as a runaway street kid - what the life is like, what the kids are like, and what society should do to help them. She spoke at the Chautauqua Lecture Series in New York. She's the author of two books, "Children of the Evening" and "Children of the Street."
August 16, 1999 - In 1997 and 1998, a series of almost a dozen suspicious fires destroyed a number of older buildings in Superior, Wisconsin. Investigations into the causes and perpetrators of the fires were inconclusive. Author Mike Savage draws on the arson episodes in his new mystery novel Burn baby Burn.