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.
March 17, 2009 - Well... the economic turmoil that's making financial products like payday loans more prevalent offers a lesson. Economists haven't refined it yet, but commentator Peter Smith can sum it up in one word- Simplicity.
March 24, 2009 - David Plotz, editor of the online magazine Slate, read every word of the Old Testament. He chronicles the experience in "Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible." Plotz is an award-winning journalist and the head editor of Slate, the world's largest online magazine. He's been writing for Slate since the popular site launched in 1996. He's also a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Rolling Stone, and The Washington Post. He spoke recently at the Minneapolis Central Library as part of the library's "Talk of the Stacks" series.
April 3, 2009 - Four years ago Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden burst onto the literary scene with "Three Day Road," a tale of two Canadian Cree Indians who volunteer as snipers during World War One. Boyden is all about dichotomies. He is part Ojibwe and part Scots-Irish. He splits his time between New Orleans where he teaches and James Bay in Northern Ontario where he fishes and hunts on the reservation. His new novel "Through Black Spruce" has two narrators. The first is Will Bird, a hard drinking former bush pilot who is in a coma on a Cree reservation. The second is his niece Annie. She also lives on the reservation, but leaves to work as a model, while trying to find her sister who has disappeared. The book just won Canada's top literary award, the Giller prize. Boyden told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he chose the characters because he wanted to write about the extremes of modern native life.
April 15, 2009 - As the Guthrie Theater kicks off its Kushner celebration this weekend, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner speaks about his work. Kushner won a Pulitzer for his play "Angels in America," which dealt with AIDS and gay life in the 1980s. He's also won two Tony awards, an Emmy, and just about every other award a playwright can win. He wrote the book for the musical "Caroline, or Change" and the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's "Munich." The Guthrie's Kushner festival will run through June, and will feature several Kushner plays, including the premier of a work commissioned by the Guthrie, "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures." Kusher spoke earlier this year at the Hopkins Center for the Arts as part of the Pen Pals lecture series sponsored by the Library Foundation of Hennepin County.
April 16, 2009 - MPR’s Marianne Combs reports on the University of Minnesota three-day international conference celebrating the work of Minnesota poet Robert Bly.
April 18, 2009 - Friends of Bill Holm with Robert Bly, hosted by Fred Child of Performance Today, will feature an impressive list of writers and musicians who were friends with, inspired by, and connected to Bill Holm, including Emilie Buchwald, Phebe Hanson, Jim Lenfestey, John Calvin Rezmerski, and Barton Sutter with his musical brother Ross Sutter.
April 19, 2009 - Friends of Bill Holm with Robert Bly, hosted by Fred Child of Performance Today, will feature an impressive list of writers and musicians who were friends with, inspired by, and connected to Bill Holm, including Emilie Buchwald, Phebe Hanson, Jim Lenfestey, John Calvin Rezmerski, and Barton Sutter with his musical brother Ross Sutter.
April 21, 2009 - Two girls, Sabina Zimering and Lucy Smith, hid from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. They survived the Holocaust and live in Minnesota today. Zimering wrote her story in the book, "Hiding in the Open." Both women were interviewed by MPR's Dan Olson for the Voices of Minnesota series.
April 28, 2009 - We're going to stay on... or next to the water for this next story. It's a story almost as old as moveable type. And writers and editors have served it up from every possible angle - except one.
May 5, 2009 - It took its own sweet time, but it looks like spring has finally sprung. Everything is in bloom -- or about to start blooming -- everywhere. Commentator Peter Smith is waiting for one special arrival -- one that could show up just about any time now.