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.
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.
May 2, 2013 - The two-time Tony winner Mark Rylance talks with Kerri Miller about acting and creativity.
June 7, 2013 - Best-selling writer Dennis Lehane, speaking in Hopkins, Minnesota as part of Hennepin County Library's Pen Pals Author Lecture Series. Three of his books have been made into Hollywood movies. Lehane says he writes fiction because he always loved to read and he comes from a long line of Boston Irish storytellers.
June 19, 2013 - Vince Flynn, the St. Paul native novelist died this morning. He was 47. Flynn was a New York Times best selling author of "The Last Man," his most recent 'Mitch Rapp' thriller series book. But, in this MPR interview in 2000, he said his start into book-writing wasn't easy.
July 3, 2013 - On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, Richard Moe speaks to a sold-out Minnesota Historical Society event about his book, "The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers." Guest: Richard Moe: President emeritus, National Trust for Historic Preservation. Former chief of staff to Vice President Walter Mondale. Author of "The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers." Forthcoming book about FDR's 1940 presidential election.
July 16, 2013 - A new novel from a Minneapolis small press links blends elements of a spy thriller, a romance, history, philosophy and environmental concerns about the future of the planet. The New York Times raved about author J.M. Ledgard's "Submergence " calling it "a book obsessed with unexplored depths, whether of self, of world conflict or of the ocean." Euan Kerr reports Coffee House Press says the national publishing houses passed over the book, but it's exactly the material Coffee House seeks.
July 24, 2013 - Author Benjamin Percy breaks the trend of portraying werewolves as cuddly creatures in his newest novel “Red Moon”.
August 23, 2013 - On this edition of Daily Circuit’s Friday Roundtable, panelists will discuss "what made them."