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.
June 6, 1991 -
June 21, 1991 -
June 22, 1991 - The Gay Nineties: An Anthology of Contemporary Gay Fiction, edited by Phil Willkie and Greg Baysans. In 1983 the gay literary quarterly, the James White Review was founded by Grey Baysans, Paul Emond, and Phil Willkie. Emond left in 1985. Baysons resigned in 1991. It was transferred to the Lambda Literary Foundation in Washington, DC in 1998. Willkie was listed as publisher emeritus until it ceased publication in 2004. During Willkie’s era the quarterly developed national and international prestige, and James White’s name became far more widely known. Willkie reminisces, “I enjoyed the business side, started going to the nation’s book shows and doing an annual reading in New York from 1986 that had hundreds attending.”
June 26, 1991 -
June 28, 1991 -
June 28, 1991 - MPR’s Bob Potter interviews Lou Bellamy, artistic director of The Penumbra Theatre, about August Wilson. Bellamy discusses Penumbra’s production of Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
June 28, 1991 -
June 29, 1991 - Minnesota writer John Shepard answers listener questions about places to go and things to see all around the region.
June 29, 1991 -
July 2, 1991 -