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 12, 1996 - Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner, speaks at Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis for the annual Global Voices Lecture series. Heaney reads numerous poems during speech.
November 25, 1996 - Midday presents a Westminster Town Hall Forum with writer, photographer, and artist Gordon Parks. His address is entitled “A Life of Art.” Parks recalls his family, time in St. Paul, and his art. Following the speech, Parks answers audience questions.
March 13, 1997 - Midday presents a live broadcast of the Westminster Town Hall Forum, featuring author Rabbi Michael Lerner. The title of his presentation is “Transcending Racism and Hate.”
April 23, 1997 - Author and columnist Molly Ivins is guest speaker for this Frank Premack Memorial Lecture at University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute. Ivins talks the meanness of contemporary politics.
June 12, 2003 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews author Regina McBride about her novel The Land of Women, which tells of a complex relationship between mother and daughter.
January 18, 2005 - On this Literary Friendships event, host Garrison Keillor shares the stage with Robert Bly and Donald Hall, leading figures in American letters. The two met as undergraduates at Harvard in the late 1940s, where Bly first published Hall's poetry in the school literary journal. Through letters and visits, they've corresponded for over 50 years.
February 16, 2005 - On this Literary Friendships event, host Garrison Keillor shares the stage with married writers Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman who have ten novels and four children. Chabon and Waldman met on a blind date eleven years ago and were engaged to be married three weeks later. He writes at night; she writes during the day. They live in California with their four young children.
March 4, 2005 - On this Literary Friendships event, host Garrison Keillor shares the stage with poets Dana Gioia and Kay Ryan. Both being California poets with working-class origins, the two became good friends.
March 17, 2016 - An MPR News Presents broadcast of Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer Jon Meacham speaking at the Pen Pals Lecture Series. Meacham has written about Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and President George H.W. Bush. Author says he writes biography rather than history, because history is shaped by individuals who, despite their flaws, do the right thing in moments of crisis.