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 24, 2013 - On the agenda this week: Four gifted landscape painters, a celebrated composer's Minnesota premiere and a play that has it all: zombies, cannibals and a Buddhist backbone.
October 29, 2013 - Interview with Jack El-Hai, author of the book, 'Nonstop, a turbulent history of Northwest Airlines.
November 4, 2013 - On this episode of The Daily Circuit, Kerri Miller talks with writer Garrison Keillor, who says that poets who think their art is an opportunity to communicate the bleakness of their lives should reconsider.
November 8, 2013 - When hard-living, hard-partying Texas cowboy Ron Woodroof received some very bad news in 1985, he likely had no idea that his life would inspire a movie.
November 20, 2013 - In this episode of Appetites, MPR’s Tom Crann talks with Minnesota poet and writer Heid Erdrich about the local food movement. Though seen as a relatively recent phenomenon, Erdrich argues in a book that the local food movement goes back to the indigenous populations of our region.
November 25, 2013 - Gulliver Unravels, featuring Kevin Kling and Chastity Brown, will be performed this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. The show was commissioned by Minnesota Public Radio as part of Kevin Kling?s three-year original works residency.
December 26, 2013 - Richard Moe, Minnesota native and former chief of staff to Vice President Walter Mondale, brings readers into the world of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his latest book, "Roosevelt's Second Act."Moe explores the year 1940, what he deems a pivotal year of American history, through Roosevelt's complex character of actions and motivations as he considered pursuing a third term. Moe argues that Roosevelt's third term greatly changed d America's foreign policy and changed the way people perceived the presidency.Moe joins The Daily Circuit to discuss his book. Moe will also speak Nov. 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
January 6, 2014 - MPR’s Dan Kraker reports on wild rice, the iconic grain that grows across much of the northern half of the state, being at the center of a contentious debate over mining and the environment. Kraker conducts interviews with individuals from both sides of the debate.
January 9, 2014 - Minnesota native Bob Dylan wrote the words for that song, "Temporary Like Achilles", on a sheet of paper now owned by the Minnesota Historical Society. Curator Patrick Coleman led our tour of their library stacks.
January 24, 2014 - It's a Friday in Minnesota, and that means tonight's a good time for a meat raffle.It may be a part of Minnesota culture, but to newcomers and out-of-towners, the meat raffle baffles. As "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert observed in the New York Times after visiting a Brainerd meat raffle in 2006, "You know you're an outsider when something that seems perfectly normal to everyone else is impenetrably bizarre to you."Meat raffles are considered a form of legal gambling, and they're regulated in this state by the Minnesota Gambling Control Board. They are common in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as in Canada and England.