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.
January 4, 2013 - Journalist and humor writer Calvin Trillin speaks in Minneapolis at the Talk of the Stacks series about his new book "Dogfight: An Occasionally Interrupted Narrative Poem About the Presidential Campaign."
January 15, 2013 - A man beset with the problem of an overfull fishpond, a student who has to face a grinning skull as he eats his Froot Loops, and a young girl preparing for the Rapture which is due to begin in a couple of hours. These are all characters in Minnesota writer Scott Dominic Carpenter's new collection of short stories "This Jealous Earth." Carpenter claims the stories came about as a distraction from other writing.
January 29, 2013 - Budgets for many theater companies are tight these days. But culturally specific organizations -- African-American theaters, Latino theaters, Asian theaters -- face unique challenges when it comes to securing support.
January 31, 2013 - Arthur Phillips speaks in Hopkins at the Pen Pals Lecture Series about his latest best-selling book, "The Tragedy of Arthur," a contemporary novel that contains an Elizabethan play.
February 28, 2013 - Maya Angelou speaks with award-winning African Americans Kofi Annan, Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Hudson, Regina Taylor and Alicia Keys. They tell their own stories of success and community.
March 8, 2013 - On this MPR News Presents program, Minnesota author Louise Erdrich speaks at Concordia University in St. Paul about her National Book Award-winning book, "The Round House," and her love of writing. Erdrich also reads from the book.
March 10, 2013 - On this episode of On Being, Krista Tippet interviews Minnesota writer Kevin Kling, who shares his own special angle on life's humor and its ruptures.
March 12, 2013 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles the Penumbra Theatre staging of Spunk, three short stories of Zora Neale Hurston adapted by Jelly's Last Jam writer George C. Wolfe.
April 16, 2013 - In an unlikely collaboration double Tony Award winning actor Mark Rylance joins forces with Duluth poet Louis Jenkins to create a new play about ice fishing at the Guthrie.
April 26, 2013 - Minnesota writer Patricia Hampl presents a staged performance of "The Big Time: F. Scott Fitzgerald." Commissioned by MPR in 2010 for the 100th anniversary of the Fitzgerald Theater, Patricia Hampl and Dan Chouinard perform a literary and musical story about Fitzgerald's version of making it big.