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 7, 1993 - Minneapolis Black author Shika Doss reads her work about her mother, family, and estranged father.
May 7, 1993 - On this Voices from the Heartland segment, Minnesota writer Laurie Allmann reads an essay about a dawn experience outside Fargo, North Dakota.
May 8, 1993 - A reading from Native American author Louise Erdrich’s The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year. The book is a meditation on the experience of motherhood and the first nonfiction work by Erdrich.
May 8, 1993 - MPR’s Chris Roberts interviews Karal Ann Marling, author and professor of Art History and of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, about the history and impact of the public holiday Mother’s Day in the United States.
May 14, 1993 - A Midmorning interview with Minnesota author and teacher Jon Hassler, who talks about the process of writing Dear James. Hassler first got the idea of novel during a trip to the Vatican.
May 14, 1993 - On this Voices from the Heartland segment, Minnesota author Barton Sutter reads his essay on spring cleaning and remembrances, titled Ghost of a Good Bad Man.
May 15, 1993 - Minnesota travel writer John Shepard visits MPR studios with some summer vacation ideas. Shepard details areas of state beyond the well-traversed.
May 21, 1993 - On this Voices from the Heartland segment, Twin Cities author and teacher Judith Hougen reads her essay, Summer on Lake Minnetonka.
June 7, 1993 - A Midmorning interview with Dennis Anderson, outdoors editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Anderson talks about various Minnesota sporting topics and his book, An Hour Before Dawn: Stories of the Outdoors.
June 10, 1993 - MPR’s Bob Potter talks with American journalist and author Larry Millett about the changes in Minneapolis skyline, efforts on preservation, and his book, Lost Twin Cities. Millett has been honored for the published work by International Architecture Book Award.