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.
January 31, 2006 - You may know Camille Paglia from her wide-ranging columns on culture and politics on Salon. Or from her breakthrough book: "Sexual Personae, a treatise on decadence in the history of art." It's fair to say her thoughts are often provocative, causing controversy with feminists and cultural conservatives alike. In her most recent book, she goes back to basics, and turns to her academic roots: poetry. And she rails against what she terms "post -modernist" theories of poetry. The title -- "Break, Blow, Burn" -- comes from a line of one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. It's a collection of essays on 43 poems Paglia teaches in class: from lyrics to a song by Joni Mitchell, to classics like Shakespeare and Donne.
February 1, 2006 - A writer, who has traveled the world searching for the secrets of a long life, is now working to fight obesity in children. In partnership with MPR's Sound Learning, Dan Buettner is launching the Blue Zones Challenge. It is named for the so-called blue zones, places in the world where people live longer than the rest of us. Buettner is the author of "Secrets of Long Life" which was the cover story in November's National Gegraphic magazine. Dan Buettner joins me this morning in the studio.
February 3, 2006 - For nearly a decade the Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro has made the most of February's dreariness with its Ibsen festival. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen is best known for works including "A Doll's House" and "Hedda Gabler." This year is the centenial of the playwright's death. The Commonweal is marking the anniversary with a production of his final play.
February 8, 2006 - Midday presents a program highlighting two masters: one of the concerto, the other the cookbook. Voices of Minnesota visits two women who have risen to the top of two rather different fields: Minnesota Orchestra Concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis, and prolific cookbook author Beatrice Ojakangas.
February 14, 2006 - A lost era -- a time when immigrant workers rolled cigars by hand in southern Florida comes to life in "El Lector". It's a new book for young people, written by northern Minnesota author William Durbin. Minnesota Public Radio's Stephanie Hemphill reports.
February 28, 2006 - A new report from the Humphrey Institute says artists' centers can help revitalize neighborhoods and boost the economy. The chief author of the report, Ann Markusen, points to the Playwrights' Center and the Northern Clay Center in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis.
March 2, 2006 - The main character in Minneapolis author Lorna Landvik's latest book "Oh My Stars" is dealing with a lot of misfortune. Violet Mathers is growing up in rural Kentucky during the Great Depression. She's been abandoned by her mother, mistreated by her father and lost her arm in a factory accident. Violet decides to leave Kentucky and boards a bus bound for San Francisco. But a bus crash along the journey strands her in North Dakota. There Violet blooms among a group of caring midwesterners and her life is changed.
March 8, 2006 - Joining us now is Robin Hickman, the grand neice of Gordon Parks, and who followed in his foot steps as a filmmaker.
March 16, 2006 - Physicists like to theorize about all kinds of far out concepts: parallel universes, dark matter, alien civilizations and even time travel. Michio Kaku: Professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York. Kaku spoke about his book "Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions and the Future of the Cosmos," at the University of Minnesota Bookstore.
March 23, 2006 - What values and ideas have shaped the world's lone superpower?Jacob Needleman: Professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, in a speech from the Westminster Town Hall Forum in downtown Minneapolis. Needleman has written more than a dozen books, including "The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders," "Two Dreams of America" and "The Wisdom of Love." He was also a contributor to the PBS program "A World of Ideas." Westminster Town Hall Forum