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 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.
June 29, 2004 - Ruminator Books, the nationally recognized independent bookstore on the Macalester College campus in St. Paul, is closing. After a series of financial problems and several attempts to find solutions, Macalester College has terminated the bookstore's lease. Booklovers say Minnesota is losing a piece of its literary history.
July 15, 2004 - In 1998, the Minneapolis rock band Semisonic soared to international stardom on the wings of its smash single, "Closing Time." Three years later, the band was dropped from its record contract and left contemplating an uncertain future. Semisonic drummer Jacob Slichter has written a memoir retracing the band's beginnings, its meteoric rise to fame and fall from major label grace. The book is called "So You Wana Be a Rock and Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales From a Drummer's Life."
July 22, 2004 - Many teenagers can tell horror stories of what goes on in on-line chat rooms. In recent years there have been a number of cases of older adults seeking out children for not just conversation, but for sex. In response the FBI has mounted sting operations to capture likely offenders before they have a chance to strike. A new play examines the ethics of such methods. "Sexsting" gets its first reading at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis tomorrow.
August 21, 2004 -
September 3, 2004 - MPR’s Bob Kelleher traces the individuals and movement that led to the U.S. 1964 Wilderness Act, creating the nation's system of federally protected wilderness. Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area was one of the first. Several Minnesotans played prominent roles, including then U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey and a junior college administrator from Ely, named Sigurd Olson.
September 3, 2004 - The federal Wilderness Act is forty years old today - a document with a lot of Minnesota connections. The Bill was first introduced in 1956 by Minnesota US Senator Hubert Humphrey. One its most visible supporters was Ely writer Sigurd Olson. Olson's biographer, David Backes, says Olson was controversial but respected.
September 8, 2004 - "Shanda" is a yiddish word for 'scandal.' It's a word used to describe someone who is an embarrassment to his family or even his community. Minneapolis writer Neal Karlen describes himself as a shanda. He grew up Jewish, in a devout Twin Cities family. At one point it looked as thought he was going to become a rabbi. But he turned to journalism instead, and began to drift away from his heritage. He says in time he became what he describes a Jewish "Uncle Tom"