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.
June 12, 2007 - MPR’s Euan Kerr interviews Laurie Lindeen, member of the group Zuzu's Petals, about her memoir "Petal Pusher.”
June 14, 2007 - A tour of the delights and the disappointments of the Twin Cities' architectural landscape.
June 26, 2007 - St. Paul author Norma Sommerdorf has written a story about an teenage girl from an immigrant family who lives near the Red River and is forced to grow up too quickly.
June 26, 2007 - Stampeding bison, drunken ox cart drivers and a teen romance are all part of a new book by a St. Paul author. The book "Red River Girl" is fiction but the story is rich with historical fact from the mid 1840's. The story's heroine is a 13 year old girl forced to take on adult responsibility while coping with the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.
July 10, 2007 - Hundreds of theater companies across the country are participating in a year-long floating theater festival. They're presenting short plays to the public as part of a project called "365 Days...365 Plays." It's an attempt to make theater easier to produce and more accessible to audiences. The Twin Cities company Nautilus Music-Theater is performing the plays that make up Week 35 of the project.
July 23, 2007 - Midday examines the hype around the latest Harry Potter book, and discovers other young adult books that can hook kids into reading.
July 24, 2007 - Author Jonis Agee's new novel "The River Wife" actually tells the story of several wives, five generations of women who live on a piece of land on the Mississippi in southern Missouri. For each of them it's an uncertain life, buffeted by lawlessness on the river, the Civil War and then Prohibition. Agee now lives in Nebraska. But she grew up in Missouri, and later taught in Minnesota for two decades.
August 10, 2007 - The French hold the playwright Moliere in the high esteem the English-speaking world reserves for Shakespeare. As with the Bard of Avon, there is mystery about Moliere's life. In 1644, when Moliere was a struggling actor, the authorities threw him into debtors prison. On his release, he disappeared for six months. After resurfacing, he led his company on a 13-year tour that made him famous, and earned him a place at the French court. When French film director Laurant Tirard heard this story, it got him thinking.
August 15, 2007 - MPR’s Stephanie Hemphill talks with poet Louis Jenkins about writing poetry and his book "North of the Cities." Jenkins reads a few poems, including "Uncle Axel."
August 20, 2007 - A new children's book by two northern Minnesota writers combines vibrant watercolors with a gentle message of positive self-esteem. It's about a moose called "Agate," and its authors both live on the North Shore of Lake Superior. They talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Stephanie Hemphill.