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.
October 4, 2006 - The Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul kicked off its 30th anniversary season by announcing a multi-year August Wilson project.
October 5, 2006 - Hundreds of people are expected at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis tonight. The main attraction will not be a film, although one will be showing. They're going to see fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. He burst onto the international scene two decades ago with his "Sandman" comic. Since then he's written novels, plays, film scripts, and children's books. Tonight, before a showing of his screenplay "MirrorMask," Gaiman will read from his new short story collection "Fragile Things." The book will enter the New York Times best sellers list this week at number 14. Many of the stories in the collection are quite horrifying.
October 11, 2006 - MPR’s Tom Crann interviews poet Tess Gallagher and asks her to read selected poems.
October 12, 2006 - A new book by sportswriter John Egan tells the story of basketball Hall of Famer Vern Mikkelsen. Mikkelsen played alongside George Mikan and Jim Pollard on the Minneapolis Lakers when they won a series of NBA championships in the late '40s and early '50s. He was introduced to the game when his family moved to Askov, Minnesota where his father, a Danish immigrant, was hired as a Lutheran minister. Mikkelsen, who lives today in the Twin Cities, says the man who recruited him to play at Hamline University, ended up in Askov by accident. That is Vern Mikkelsen who sang with the Hamline A Cappella choir for three years before quitting to concentrate on basketball. To read about that and more you'll want to track down a copy of a brand new book, "The Vern Mikkelsen Story" by John Egan.
October 13, 2006 - Neil Simon, who will be honored Sunday with the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, was at the Guthrie Theater on Oct. 8 for a conversation with its artistic director Joe Dowling.
October 19, 2006 - Katherine Lanpher, former MPR "Midmorning" host, who left Minnesota for New York City, returns to the MPR airwaves to discuss book about her move to the big city. Lanpher also answers listener questions. This is part 1 of 2. Lanpher is also former co-host of "The Al Franken Show" on Air America Radio. Lanpher's book is titled "Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move." Program contains pledge-drive segments.
October 19, 2006 - Continued discussion with Katherine Lanpher, former MPR "Midmorning" host. Lanpher left Minnesota for New York City, and returns to the MPR airwaves to discuss book about her move to the big city. Lanpher also answers listener questions. This is part 2 of 2. Lanpher is also former co-host of "The Al Franken Show" on Air America Radio. Lanpher's book is titled "Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move." Program contains pledge-drive segments.
October 20, 2006 - MPR’s Stephanie Hemphill talks with Bart Sutter, Duluth’s first-ever Poet Laureate. Sutter discusses the honor and reads a poem.
October 23, 2006 - Author Edna O'Brien left Ireland years ago, as a young woman but her first novel about two girls trying to escape life in the convent made her notorious in her homeland. Tonight O'Brien appears at the Fitzgerald Theater for Talking Volumes to discuss her long career and her newest book: "The Light of Evening" a story that reveals how unresolved her feelings still are about how and where she grew up.
November 3, 2006 - MPR’s Chris Roberts reports on "Vestibular Sense," the Mixed Blood Theatre play that peaks into the life of a young man with autism in its latest production. The play raises questions about what autism is and whether it's a deficit or an attribute for someone who has it.