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.
September 27, 2005 - Minnesota-born journalist and Washington insider Al Eisele stepped down this September as editor of the influential political newspaper he co-founded, "The Hill." Eisele's career traced a broad arc, from dabbling in minor league baseball, to covering the White House, to working there as press secretary for Vice President Walter Mondale.
October 3, 2005 - Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson is being remembered today as a literary giant who did more to bring the African American experience to the stage than any other writer. Wilson died yesterday in Seattle from liver cancer. He was 60-years-old. As Minnesota Public Radio's Chris Roberts reports, Wilson's passing is being deeply felt in the Twin Cities, where he lived and wrote for nearly 12 years.
October 3, 2005 - Playwright August Wilson is being remembered as a giant of the American Theatre. Wilson died of liver cancer in Seattle yesterday at the age of 60. He moved to St. Paul in 1978 where he got his first paying job as a writer, composing educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota. During his time in Minnesota Wilson began writing the set of plays that would make him famous. The ten-play cycle chronicled the black experience in America. In a 1991 speech to the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, Wilson fondly remembered the 12-years he lived in St. Paul.
October 3, 2005 - Tom Crann interviews Minnesota writer Ann Bauer about her book "A Wild Ride up the Cupboards," a story of how one family struggles with their son's withdrawal, and how his parents, Jack and Rachel, make sense of it in their own ways.
October 3, 2005 - August Wilson moved to St. Paul in 1978 where he got his first paying job as a writer, composing educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota. He lived here until 1990 and it was during that time that he began writing the set of plays that would make him famous. In 1991, Minnesota Public Radio aired a documentary about the playwright and his work. It is called "August Wilson's Sacred Book." Here is an excerpt narrated by Beth Friend.
October 3, 2005 - Playwright August Wilson has died of cancer. The Pulitzer-Prize winner rose to national prominence while living in Saint Paul during the 1980's. Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcoxen reports.
October 3, 2005 - One of the great voices of American theater has fallen silent. August Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one-time St. Paulite, died of liver cancer Sunday in Seattle. He was 60 years old.
October 6, 2005 - Playwright Edward Albee, best known for writing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," says art should be dangerous. Albee speaks live from the Westminster Town Hall Forum in downtown Minneapolis.
October 10, 2005 - It's a busy week for Neil Gaiman. He has a new bestselling book, Anansi Boys, and this Friday a film that he wrote opens. It's called Mirrormask. He's not just a novelist and screenwriter...he's also the author of the comic book series The Sandman. Gaiman is a local boy of sorts. Although he's English, he found himself settled outside the Twin Cities about a decade ago.
October 12, 2005 - From one-room chapels to grand cathedrals, churches all over the state are part of Minnesota's landscape. Now nearly 100 of those churches are showcased in a new book. It's full of images from a wide variety of denominations and many different architectural styles. The book is by writer Jon Hassler and photographer Doug Ohman, who traveled the state in all four seasons to photograph the churches.