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 6, 2003 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews author Verena Andermatt Conley about her book "The War Against the Beavers." It tells the tale of leaving the city for a rustic cabin in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
August 13, 2003 - Commentator Hans Eisenbeis has noticed a spate of stories over the past few months involving Minnesota children and their vulnerabilities. Some have died, others critically injured, others still simply vanished. It's got him thinking about death and his daughter Phoebe.
August 14, 2003 - Minneapolis' Brave New Workshop theater claims to be the longest-running satirical comedy theatre in the country, and to celebrate its forty-fifth birthday the theater is bringing in a writer who's likely to take issue with that distinction. Jeffrey Sweet is the resident playwright of Chicago's Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theatre, which has produced ten of his shows including "Flyovers", "American Enterprise", and "The Value of Names." He conducts workshops for writers and has written two books about writing plays. He's also written the history of Chicago's Second City theater, a troupe he contends has even deeper roots than the Brave New Workshop. He'll spar with Dudley Riggs at the Brave New Workshop's anniversary celebration tonight. He says troupes like Riggs' and Second City carry on the one of the true purposes of theater.
September 4, 2003 - Humorist Jim Hightower is in the MPR studios to talk with guest-host Mike Edgerly. Hightower speaks Thursday night at a Ruminator Books event at Macalester College. Texas humorist and author Jim Hightower, author of "Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen our Country and It's Time to Take it Back".
September 12, 2003 - September brings with a number of transitions, the passing of the season, the end of summer, the start of the school year. Those transitions remind commentator Hans Eisenbeis of the passage of time.
September 24, 2003 - Author Tracy Kidder has made his name by writing about ordinary people's lives and finding drama where few others would think to look. He established himself with "The Soul of a New Machine," a book detailing the human interactions behind the rush to create a new computer. It won Kidder both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and has since become the definitive book about the technology industry. He's also written about building a home, school children, a nursing home and the town of Northhampton, Massachusetts. Kidder's latest work, however, details the extraordinary. "Mountains Beyond Mountains" tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, an infectious-disease specialist and anthropologist who's made caring for the world's poorest and sickest his life's work. Kidder followed him to Peru, Cuba, Siberia and Haiti, chronicling his tireless efforts to bring medicine to those most in need.
September 26, 2003 - On this Word of Mouth program, MPR’s Marianne Combs presents a conversation with musician Tim Eriksen & vocalist Mirjana Lausevic; poetry reading by Minnesota poet Kate Green; a profile of St. Paul hip hop group Los Nativos; followed by a Word of Mouth segment on local arts and culture events.
September 26, 2003 - Word of Mouth
October 9, 2003 - David Halberstam is one of America's finest journalists and one of America's most widely read authors. He has written 19 books, 14 of which have been New York Times' best sellers. In the 1960s, when he was just 30 years old, he won a Pulitizer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War, and his subsequent book about the men who took us into that war, "The Best and Brightest," has been widely hailed as one of the best books of its kind. His most recent book is "The Teammates." We hear him during both hours of Midday today in discussion at a recent Pen Pals Lecture Series, sponsored by the Library Foundation of Hennepin County.
October 13, 2003 - Best-selling author and internationally known Rabbi Harold Kushner talks with Gary Eichten about his new book The Lord is my Shepherd. He recently wrote Living a Life that Matters and is best known for his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.