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.
February 25, 1994 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews author Kelly Dwyer about her debut novel, The Tracks of Angels. The book centers on a young woman working through memories of a sad childhood and finding a guardian angel as an adult. Dwyer also discusses the art of writing and theme of family and religion.
March 3, 1994 - Midday presents a Westminster Town Hall Forum with Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende, Her address is entitled “Latin America, Romance, and Reality.”
March 4, 1994 - On this First Friday segment, Irish-American teacher and writer Frank McCourt reads "Threatening Letters" from Angela's Ashes: A Memoir. The book is tragicomic recollection of McCourt’s childhood experience of squalor.
March 10, 1994 - MPR’s Tom Meersman talks with Faroese poet Roy Paterson, who discusses the Faroe Islands and of keeping tradition of culture. Paterson reads a poem in both English and in Faroese.
March 17, 1994 - On this Midmorning segment, Irish-American teacher and writer Frank McCourt reads “Ham and Sherry" from Angela's Ashes: A Memoir. The book is tragicomic recollection of McCourt’s childhood experience of squalor.
March 17, 1994 - A Midday interview segment with English translator and author Kevin Crossley-Holland about poetry. Topics include the history, rhyme vs. free verse, and popularity of poetry in Minnesota. Crossley-Holland is endowed chair in Humanities at the University of St. Thomas.
March 29, 1994 - American author and journalist Naomi Wolf speaks on the topic of feminism at at Saint Olaf College in Northfield.
April 2, 1994 - American writer and novelist Frances Sherwood discusses her book, Vindication. The novel is a historical fiction on Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer feminist and author of the radical classic, A Vindication of the Rights of Women: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.
April 21, 1994 - American poet and essayist Kathleen Norris talks about religion and her book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.
May 6, 1994 - On this First Friday segment, a conversation with English author Wayne Hill, co-author of Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit. Hill shares the background behind book.