Repeatedly 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. This curation presents broadcasts over the decades of writer’s voices in form of speech, interview, and discussion.
September 27, 1991 - Morning Edition’s Mark Heistad interviews Fred Friendly, author, television producer, and former president of CBS. Friendly discusses his writing, news publishing, and the Bill of Rights.
November 15, 1991 - Morning Edition’s Mark Heistad talks with historian Martin Ridge about his book, Ignatius Donnelly: Portrait of a Politician. Donnelly was U.S. House of Representative for Minnesota's 2nd district, a populist writer, and pseudoscientist.
January 6, 1992 - Midmorning’s Paula Schroeder interviews Sarah Tulloch, editor of The Oxford Dictionary of New Words. Tulloch describes examples of “new” words and terms in contemporary culture.
January 17, 1992 - MPR’s Beth Friend has a conversation about race in entertainment culture with Marlon Riggs, a Black gay filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist.
January 20, 1992 - Midmorning’s Paula Schroeder interviews writer Deborah Digges about her book, Fugitive Spring. The memoir follows the passage from a cloistered childhood, her defiant college career, early marriage to an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War, and her emergence as a gifted poet.
February 7, 1992 - MPR’s Tom Meersman interviews Christopher Flavin, co-author of Saving the Planet: How to Shape an Environmentally Sustainable Global Economy." Flavin details the measures that humans will need to change in the coming years and decades to avoid global consequences.
February 8, 1992 - An excerpt of Black author Toni Cade Bambara doing a public reading.
February 19, 1992 - MPR’s Paula Schroeder interviews Black journalist, novelist, and poet Thulani Davis. Davis details the autobiographical premise involved in book, 1959: A Novel.
February 22, 1992 - American sociologist Kathleen Blee discusses her book, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, with Weekend Edition host Jim Wishner.
February 26, 1992 - Worldview’s Mike Maus talks with French-Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner, author of Eyewitness: A Personal Account of the Unraveling of the Soviet Union. Pozner details actions by Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, and other events, that led to the demise of the Soviet Union.