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.
October 20, 1993 - MPR’s Joe Follansbee interviews former Minnesota U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy who shares a poem on deer hunting, equinox, and views of poets.
October 22, 1993 - On this Voices from the Heartland segment, Minnesota author Jonis Agee reads from her book, Strange Angels.
October 23, 1993 - Twin Cities poet Michael Dennis Browne reads Potatoes, October.
October 26, 1993 - Midmorning’s Cathy Wurzer talks with American novelist and scholar Michael Dorris about his short story collection, Working Men. During segment, Dorris reads from book.
October 29, 1993 - Minnesota mystery writer Brian Freeman shares a Halloween story that involves a ghost along the shore of Lake Superior and the sunken ships its waters contain.
November 1, 1993 - St. Paul mystery writer Kate Green describes her novel, Black Dreams. The plot of book revolves around a psychic who receives messages from an abducted child.
November 2, 1993 - John Adams, a professor at University of Minnesota, details Minneapolis-St. Paul: People, Place, and Public Life, a book he co-authored with Barbara J. VanDrasek. The book is a geographic and sociological overview of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
November 10, 1993 - MPR’s Bob Potter interviews local author Ron Handberg about his second thriller, Cry Vengeance: A Novel. Handberg also discusses his life after WCCO and new job at KTCA with NewsNight Minnesota.
November 11, 1993 - William H. Hull, author of All Hell Broke Loose: Experiences of Young People During the Armistice Day 1940 Blizzard, talks about the stories he complied of the surprise storm that struck Minnesota on November 11, 1940. He also imparts the necessity to be aware of the speed of weather changes.
November 17, 1993 - A Midmorning conversation with Minnesota author Bill Holm about Landscape of Ghosts. The book is photography and prose centered around abandoned 20th-century areas of the American Midwest landscape. Segment includes a reading by Holm.