November 24, 2000 - Ali Salim, a screenplay writer, made it big in Hollywood. He already did commercials, one independent film, and had small roles on movies, like "Shawshank Redemption." His movie is called "So Many Dreams."
November 24, 2000 - IT'S BECOME AS TRADITIONAL AS TURKEY FOR FANS OF GUITAR MUSIC IN THE TWIN CITIES. LEO KOTTKE IS PLAYING HIS 16TH ANNUAL HOLIDAY CONCERT AT THE ORDWAY IN ST. PAUL SUNDAY NIGHT. KOTTKE IS A WORLD RENOWNED FINGER STYLE GUITARIST WHO MAKES HIS HOME IN THE TWIN CITIES. I ASKED HIM HOW THE HOME TOWN HOLIDAY CONCERT BECAME A TRADITION:
November 24, 2000 - Nearly 100,000 people are expected in downtown St. Paul for the three day Hmong New Year, two Minnesota Wild games, and other events. The majority of the participants will converge on the city's RiverCentre to celebrate the Hmong New Year. MPR’s Tom Scheck provides a glimpse into the celebration.
November 27, 2000 - If you're a football fan, you're not alone. Minnesota is full of enthusiastic spectators of the game from the high school leagues on up. Ross Bernstein's new book "Pigskin Pride: Celebrating a Century of Minnesota Football" documents I asked him how Minnesota stacks up against other football loving states: Ross Bernstein called to give the details about his upcoming book signings: Saturday from 11-4pm at Southdale B Dalton and Sunday from 1-5pm at Burnsville B-Dalton. Saturday from 6-8 at Maplewood B-Dalton.
November 28, 2000 - Every story in Frederick Busch's new collection of short fiction"Don't Tell Anyone" is about secrets. There are different kinds: people hiding a troubled past, or a current problem, some denying reality, and others simply ignorant of what the rest of the world seems to know. Busch says he did not set out to write about secrets, its just the way his fiction has developed in recent years. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr secrets are stories in themselves, but he doesn't really know from where his stories come. Frederick Busch's collection of stories "Don't Tell Anyone" is published by Norton. If you would like to hear an extended interview with Frederick Busch, and read more about his work, please visit the bookpage at Minnesotapublicradio-dot-org. You'll also be able to find past book interviews from MPR programs.
November 29, 2000 - Margaret Atwood's latest novel "The Blind Assassin" focuses on an octegenarian looking back on the events leading to the death of her younger sister. But the book-- which recently won Britain's prestigious Booker prize- also contains a novel-within-the-novel and yet another science fiction tale within THAT. One of the Booker judges said the novel "demonstrates Atwood's immense emotional range, as well as her poet's eye for both telling detail and psychological truth." Atwood told Minnesota Public Radio's Stephanie Curtis many of the moments in the novel came from the experiences of her mother and grandmother.
December 6, 2000 - Minnesota author Vince Flynn is out with his third political thriller called THE THIRD OPTION. Flynn's previous two books TERM LIMITS and TRANSFER OF POWER were both on the New York Times Best-sellers list. THE THIRD OPTION opens with the President trying to battle terrorism in Libya and Iraq. Since diplomacy and military intervention--are not working, the President and his security advisors are forced to employ "the third option"-- covert action. Flynn's expert C-I-A spyman Mitch Rapp--known by the code name "Iron Man" reappears to save the day. Flynn says he realizes critics have complained that Rapp is the perfect spy--maybe too perfect---but Flynn says that's all part of his job as an author.
December 6, 2000 - Photographer Annie Leibovitz is in the Twin Cities tonight promoting the paperback edition of her picturebook called "Women." The book is a departure for Leibovitz who is most recognized for her glossy celebrity photographs in Vanity Fair and Vogue. "Women" does contain shots of actresses lounging in their underwear, but it also includes photos of ordinary women who make their living doing all sorts of odd and not-so-odd jobs. Leibovitz says she wanted the collection to show who women are and what they look like, but initially she wasn't sure her idea would work:
December 7, 2000 - Tonight Twin Cities theater goers will get a rare opportunity to see one of America's premier experimental theater ensembles--- the Wooster Group. Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr reports the New York based company is presenting "North Atlantic" a satire on cold war spy shows--- amongst other things.
December 7, 2000 - Born in Egypt and now living in Britain, novelist Ahdaf Soueif says she is caught in the space between two cultures. She's placed both of those cultures under a magnifying-glass in her Booker Prize short-listed novel "The Map of Love." The book examines the complex historical and political relationship between Egypt, Britain and the US, but Soueif told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr she set out to write a romance. She says she is a fan of the genre of stories of courageous Victorian women setting out from the West to explore the exotic east, and so that is where she started.