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 10, 2001 - Second Hour: A speech by author Ernest Gaines. He wrote A Lesson Before Dying. He spoke at the Hennepin County. Tapes are available through the Hennepin County Library Foundation.
May 14, 2001 - MPR’s Gary Eichten talks with former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy about politics and a new documentary about his life, titled “I'm Sorry I Was Right.” McCarthy also answers listener questions.
May 17, 2001 - Over the last few weeks bright orange and black butterflies have been returning to the Minnesota landscape. As ever the Monarchs look remarkably fresh for having flown a long and circuitous route from their winter homes in Mexico. That journey has long been a source of fascination and mystery to humans. Every year volunteers, many of them school students, tag thousand of butterflies in the hope they will be captured in Mexico, and reveal a little more about how the Monarchs make their trip. For her book "Four Wings and a Prayer" author Sue Halpern spent almost a year travelling the Monarch flyways meeting the scientists and others who are trying to piece the puzzle together. She told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr her fascination began in Mexico. Author Sue Halpern will read from her book "Four Wings and a Prayer" at the Como Lakeside Pavilion on North Lexington Avenue in St Paul tonight at 7.
May 18, 2001 - This Sunday Open Book in Minneapolis celebrates its first anniversary, and a very successful year. Co-owned by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Loft Literary Center and Milkweed Editions publishing company, Open Book is the nations first center of its kind: a place to read, write and bind books. Minnesota Public Radio's Marianne Combs reports: { At the center of the Open Book building white panels furl out from the handrail of a large spiral staircase. Sculptor and Book Artist Karen Worth, who helped design the staircase is writing a series of words onto scrolls of paper attached to the panels - she says the staircase is not only a physical connection between the floors of the building but also a metaphorical connection between the different book organizations working in the building.
May 18, 2001 - This Sunday Open Book in Minneapolis celebrates its first anniversary, and a very successful year. Co-owned by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Loft Literary Center and Milkweed Editions publishing company, Open Book is the nations first center of its kind: a place to read, write and bind books. At the center of the Open Book building white panels furl out from the handrail of a large spiral staircase. Sculptor and Book Artist Karen Worth, who helped design the staircase is writing a series of words onto scrolls of paper attached to the panels - she says the staircase is not only a physical connection between the floors of the building but also a metaphorical connection between the different book organizations working in the building.
May 28, 2001 - If you're on your way back from a long weekend at the lake- a little sad thinking about the work week ahead- don't despair, your trip to the northwoods isn't over yet. Minnesota author Douglas Wood is out with a new book about an island on sprawling Rainy lake near the Canadian border. Wood owns the island, and the small cabin a local craftsman built there in 1925. Woods book, "Fawn Island," is a collection of essays that explores how the wilderness retreat has shaped Wood's innermost thoughts and his view of the larger world. In the book, he writes "Fawn Island is a rugged but poetic outcrop of granite in the heart of the northwoods." He told Minnesota Public Radio's Lorna Benson that his rustic cabin reflects that landscape.
May 28, 2001 - A Common Place Memorial Day special. The program is the story of four World War II chaplains who went down together with their torpedoed ship in 1943. Plus a conversation with Bruce Weigl, a Vietnam veteran who writes poetry.
May 28, 2001 - If you're on your way back from a long weekend at the lake- a little sad thinking about the work week ahead- don't despair, your trip to the northwoods isn't over yet. Minnesota author Douglas Wood is out with a new book about an island on sprawling Rainy lake near the Canadian border. Wood owns the island, and the small cabin a local craftsman built there in 1925. Woods book, "Fawn Island," is a collection of essays that explores how the wilderness retreat has shaped Wood's innermost thoughts and his view of the larger world.
May 29, 2001 - The final Pen Pals lecture series featuring Wisconsin author Jane Hamilton. Two of her books The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World were Oprah books.
June 1, 2001 - Northeastern Minnesota outdoorswoman and resort owner Justine Kerfoot died yesterday in Grand Marais. She was ninty-five. In the northwoods of Minnesota, everybody knows the name Justine Kerfoot. Her family bought the Gunflint Lodge nearly 70 years ago. Her 70 years worth of stories: the time she fell through the ice with her dog team; the time she lassoed a moose calf; the time her little son dropped a kitten down the outhouse - those stories are collected in her books, "Woman of the Boundary Waters and Gunflint".