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.
April 2, 2004 - Highlights from Thursday night's show with Minnesota humorist and playwright Kevin Kling hosting an April fool's evening of mixed monologues, music and mayhem.
April 16, 2004 - Hour 2 of Midday: A Voices of Minnesota broadcast with two remarkable women. Sabina Zimering, a Polish Jew, survived the Holocaust during World War II while literally working under the noses of the Gestapo. She wrote a book about her experiences, and now it's a play at the Great American History Theatre in St. Paul. Also, Hyun Sook Han, who survived the Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II and lived through the Korean War as well. She's a retired children's home society social worker, and she'll be honored on April 29th and May 1st for her work.
April 21, 2004 -
May 3, 2004 - As a shy, self-conscious boy growing up in St. Paul, Charles Schulz experienced the kinds of cruelty that belong uniquely to kids. And after attending a U of M extension class in cartooning and landing a job at the Pioneer Press, he experienced adult-style cruelty as well. He would go on to use those experiences -- and the hope and perseverance that accompanied them -- as inspiration for his new comic strip, "peanuts." A new collection of the very earliest Peanuts cartoons comes out today. They were drawn between 1950 and 1952. In the book's forward, Garrison Keillor calls Schulz "an innovative genius of American comics." Jean Schulz -- who called her husband "sparky" -- says she's amazed at what the early work reveals of a different side of her husband's creativity.
May 11, 2004 - On this day in 1858, Minnesota became a state. As part of commemorative events at the Capitol today, Lieutennant Governor Carol Molneau will be presented with a new book about Henry Hastings Sibley. Sibley was Minnesota's first governor. He led the state during a time of big change, when tensions were rising between European settlers and Native Americans. Rhoda Gilman is the author of "Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heart." She says Sibley, who was born in Detroit, came to the Minnesota area when he was offered a new job with the American Fur Company.
May 21, 2004 - Gail Sheehy and Pauline Boss speak as part of the University of Minnesota's Great Conversation series. They have both written about the victims of 9/11. Gail Sheehy is author of Middletown, America and Pauline Boss is author of Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief.
May 28, 2004 - Former Governor Elmer Andersen's remarks Wednesday night at the Barnes and Noble Galleria bookstore. He celebrates his 95th birthday next month and is out with a new book, "I Trust to be Believed".Plus, 14-year-old Grant Remmen of Detroit Lakes. The Minnesota spelling bee champion is heading out this weekend to the National Spelling Bee in Washington DC.
May 31, 2004 - Emily Yellin, author of the new book "Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II".
June 9, 2004 - Minnesota author Patricia Hampl presents a literary view of the Upper Mississippi. She reads from works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and even Henry David Thoreau, as well as her own musings on the great river. Music by pianist and Minnesota Public Radio favorite Dan Chouinard underscores the program.
June 22, 2004 - Minnesota writer Judith Guest says the true story of the 1968 murder of a family at their Michigan lake home inspired her to write her latest book "The Tarnished Eye." Sheriff Hugh DeWitt is the central character in the novel. He's still grieving the sudden death of his baby son and dealing with the pressure to solve a high-profile murder. The mystery story is a departure for Guest, who is perhaps best known for books focusing on family dynamics. Robert Redford made her novel "Ordinary People" into an Academy award-winning movie starring Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland. Judith Guest told Minnesota Public Radio's Greta Cunningham that she's been thinking about writing a mystery book for a long time.