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.
April 25, 1987 - Spillville is published by Milkweed Editions
May 13, 1987 - An interview with Marisha Chamberlain's about her play "Angels of Warsaw."
May 15, 1987 - Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a prize where writers try to write the worst first sentance. Sheila B. Richter has written the winner.
May 19, 1987 - Patricia Hampl and a few of her friends rode-tripped to Iowa to visit the same small town Antonin Dvorak visited when he wrote his American Quartet.
May 20, 1987 - A recording of Charles Lindbergh reading from his memoir "Spirit of St. Louis" about his first flight across the Atlantic.
May 27, 1987 - MPR’s Gary Eichten talks with Lou Bellamy, artistic director of The Penumbra Theatre, about August Wilson receiving a Pulitzer Prize Award.
May 28, 1987 - Playwright Marsha Norman speaking at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She talks about the role of family in the theater, contrasts American themes with British themes, and talks about her own family relationships.Part of the series "The Mythic Family".
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.
June 29, 1987 - Noah Adams starts a Summer reading series on The Morning Show, offering excerpts from the work of Paul Gruchow, Antoine de St. Exupery, Michael Dorris, and the Autobiography of Joan Baez.
July 18, 1987 - Writer and humorist Howard Mohr answers listener questions about his new book "How to Talk Minnesotan".