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.
August 17, 1999 - A plutonium-powered NASA spacecraft is hurtling toward a close encounter with Earth tonight to use the planet's gravity to sling it toward Saturn. The Cassini probe is scheduled to fly within 725 miles of Earth. Anti-nuclear activists fear some kind of error could cause the spacecraft to plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and shower the planet with deadly radioactive debris. But NASA officials said there was only a 1-in-1.2 million chance of accidental re-entry. As a child growing up in Cocoa, Florida, Jesse Lee Kercheval experienced the shock of space experiments gone awry along with the intense national pride associated with the Apollo missions and lunar landing. In her memoir "SPACE", Kercheval recounts a time when all of America was riveted by rockets, astronauts and outer space.
August 24, 1999 - Minnesota author Steve Thayer's new mystery "Silent Snow" takes readers on a bizzare re-creation of one the century's most notorious crimes--the Lindbergh kidnapping. As "Silent Snow" opens, investigative reporter Rick Beanblossom--the hero of Thayer's previous best-selling book the "Weatherman"--is faced with the kidnapping of his own infant son. Beanblossom tries to solve the crime with the help of his wife--a popular Twin Cities news anchor. Through a series of clues they determine the kidnappers are trying to recreate the Lindbergh kidnapping.
August 24, 1999 - A unique display is planned for the new Gateway alumni visitors center being built at the University of Minnesota. One room will feature a wall of books - 5,000 of them stacked in columns, row upon row, from floor to ceiling. All were written by or about university alumni, students and staff and were donated by current and former members of the University community. The alumni association expects to begin constructing the wall this week. I spoke with Margaret Carlson of the U of M alumni association, at a warehouse where the books are being sorted and catalogued. She says the wall will be part of a 2,600-square-foot room called the Heritage Gallery.
August 27, 1999 - Research on rape tells us that survivors suffer long after their physical wounds are healed. In her new book "Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery" Minneapolis author Patricia Weaver Francisco shares her struggle to regain her life.
September 15, 1999 - 1937 was a year of turmoil across the world, as the seeds of World War II began germinating. Yet the rampant nationalism which pushed Hitler, Franco and Mussolini atop the political forefront in Europe, was in evidence in other parts of the world. In the Caribbean, on the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the Dominican leader General Trujillo ordered the massacre of Haitian immigrants. Thousands of Haitians fled across the border back to Haiti, but many died under the hail of bullets, stones and machete blows. Novelist Edwidge Danticat, who was born in Haiti, says she has been haunted by the story of the massacre. She set her latest book "The Farming of Bones" in the midst of the turmoil in part because so few people, including many Haitians, know about what happened.
September 15, 1999 - Some sundry characters are the heart of Minnesota author Lorna Landvik's new novel. The Tall Pine Polka is set in a fictitious Minnesota town that is home to an eccentric group of neighbors. The characters often gather at a local coffee shop for what they call the Tall Pine Polka, a night of food, company, and heavenly coffee. But, as Landvik explains, it's a particular kind of coffee shop.
September 17, 1999 - A Twin Cities speech by Texas commentator and humorist Jim Hightower. He spoke at the Minnesota AFL-CIO annual meeting this week.
September 21, 1999 - MPR’s Lorna Benson talks with nature photographer Jim Brandenburg about the the Boundary Waters after the massive blowdown. Brandenburg discusses the unknown long-term effects to the forest and animals.
September 22, 1999 - A University of St. Thomas speech by film critic and nationally syndicated columnist Michael Medved. He is author of several books including "Hollywood vs. America."
September 23, 1999 - Shakespeare wrote all of his works without the use of a dictionary. Such a thing simply didn't exist in Elizabethan England. The dictionary as we know it is a relatively new invention, and the grandest of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary was only completed 72 years ago. Author Simon Winchester researched the creation of the OED for his book "The Professor and the Madman". He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr when the project started in the 1850's with the audacious aim of listing every single word in the English language.