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.
May 18, 2017 - MPR’s Marianne Combs profiles Vietnamese American spoken word artist Bao Phi, who talks of the how racial trauma affects both his poetry and life. Phi also discusses his collection, “Thousand Star Hotel.”
August 29, 2017 - MPR’s Marianne Combs profiles J. Otis Powell‽, a well-respected local poet, playwright, and performer, who died on August 28th, 2017. Those who knew him say he was an uncompromising artist, a provocateur and — perhaps most importantly — a mentor to generations of other writers and performers.
October 20, 2017 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles Ojibwe writer Linda LeGarde Grover. The two talk about her collection of essays titled "Onigamiising," the Ojibwe name for the place she has always considered home: Duluth. There are themes running through the writing, like the Ojibwe concept of living a good life.
November 30, 2017 - MPR’s Euan Kerr joins All Things Considered host Tom Crann to look back at Garrison Keillor’s storied career amidst allegations of inappropriate behavior.
March 9, 2020 - MPR’s John Enger interviews Native American author Dennis Staples about his first novel, "This Town Sleeps." The story depicts the struggle of a gay Ojibwe man to accept a Native tradition where he rarely felt at home, while escaping a reservation he could never quite leave. It is told through the eyes of a twenty-something narrator, who bears a striking resemblance to Staples himself.
February 15, 2022 - All Things Considered’s Tom Crann interviews Minneapolis activist and writer Junauda Petrus about her book “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them” being placed on a potenial banned books list in Texas. The book is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.