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.
February 14, 1987 - MPR’s Mark Heistad visits the downtown store office of the Ely Echo newspaper and gets a tour from it’s editor, Bob Cary (a.k.a. “Jackpine” Bob).
April 4, 1987 - Weekend presents an interview with Eugene McCarthy, who comments on people in politics that have made an impression on him over the years. McCarthy talks about Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Rayburn, Humphrey, and Mondale. He also tells us his view of the press and the state of politics today.
April 7, 1987 - MPR Special Coverage presents an Bill Holm audio postcard from Xi'an, China. It includes poems and essays, labeled "Praise," "Black Hair," "Staring," and "Books in China."
April 25, 1987 - On this segment of Christine Sweet Reads, excerpts from Patricia Hampl’s Spillville.
May 15, 1987 - Minneapolis writer Sheila B. Richter is winner of the 1987 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a prize where writers try to write the worst first sentence. MPR’s Loren Omoto reads the “honored” short composition.
May 19, 1987 - MPR’s Beth Friend profiles Patricia Hampl and her work, Spillville. The book is a narrative and reflection on Hampl and a few of her friends rode-tripping to Iowa to visit the same small town Antonin Dvorak visited when he wrote his String Quartet No. 12 in F major (nicknamed American Quartet).
May 20, 1987 - A recording of Charles Lindbergh reading from his memoir, Spirit of St. Louis, an autobiographical account of his first flight across the Atlantic.
June 8, 1987 - Reverend Joy Bussert, a Lutheran pastor and author of Battered Women: From a Theology of Suffering to an Ethic of Empowerment; and Mary Taylor, director of the Harriet Tubman Shelter in Minneapolis, answer listener questions about battered women.
July 18, 1987 - On this Midday, a conversation with local writer and humorist Howard Mohr, who answers listener questions about his book How to Talk Minnesotan.
August 17, 1987 - MPR’s Mark Heistad presents commentary from historian Gary Clayton Anderson, author of Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux. Anderson shares the tragic story of the Dakota leader.