September 11, 2014 - MPR’s Matt Septic reports on a public discussion at Penumbra Theatre about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
August 5, 2014 - In her new novel, "Everything I Never Told You," novelist Celeste Ng quickly plunges readers into the depths of a family tragedy.Late one night, after the Lee family spends a seemingly normal evening filled with the tiny joys of parents and children, 16-year-old Lydia in a pond near the family home. No one in her family, the author tells her readers, will remember their fleeting moments of happiness."Instead they will dissect this last evening for years to come," Ng writes. "What did they miss that they should have seen? What small gesture forgotten might have changed everything? They will pick it down to the bones wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure."In "Everything I Never Told You" Ng explores misery of losing a child, while also using uses the story to examine the challenges of a mixed family in the Midwest during the 1970s, a time when interracial marriages and their offspring made attracted unwelcome and sometimes hostile attention. She will read from the novel at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Magers and Quinn Bookstore in Minneapolis.Ng said the book grew out of a story her husband told her about a little girl he knew who nearly drowned when she fell in a lake. The story touched Ng because of her own fears of the water, and she began writing about the implications for the family. As she wrote, the story developed and became about a lot more.In writing the novel, Ng, 33, began drawing on her own background as an Asian-American who grew up in Pittsburgh and in the Shaker Heights, Ohio, area near Cleveland. But she decided to set the story in the 1970s. "That seemed like a very poignant era to me," Ng said. "For her to see her daughter have a lot of opportunities that for her had maybe now passed."
June 20, 2014 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles Pooja Goswami Pavan, a Minneapolis-based, north Indian classical singer. A collection of ancient Sufi love songs re-imagined for a modern audience are highlighted.
June 6, 2014 - In a small park near the Cathedral in St. Paul, a crowd of children and adults sit in front of a puppet theater.They plopped down on the grass to see "Tucker's Robot," a high-energy slapstick tale of two pals who decide to build a robot. The show is part of the Driveway Tour by Open Eye Figure Theatre, which began 11 years ago as a practical solution to a sticky problem.
April 28, 2014 - As part of MPR’s Beneath the Surface project, reporter Elizabeth Dunbar looks at the management of pumping groundwater in fighting pollution, including remediation sites in the Twin Cities metro.
March 27, 2014 - On this episode of Minnesota Sounds and Voices, MPR’s Dan Olson profiles Orkestar Bez Ime, an Eastern European music group, which has become known as a Balkan party band. Olson interviews members of the band about the complicated music form.
February 21, 2014 - Morning Edition’s Cathy Wurzer checks with Elizabeth Baier in Rochester on the blizzard conditions in area. Much of the state was covered in snow, including southeastern Minnesota, which closed roads and schools.
February 12, 2014 - MPR’s Elizabeth Stawicki looks into the many intitial rollout problems of MNsure, the state’s health insurance exchange.
February 9, 2014 - The frigid winter has transformed the caves along the south shore of Lake Superior into a glittering icy playground. MPR’s Dan Kraker visits the Apostle Island Sea Caves, which have been overwhelmed by visitors as ice has been thick enough for hikers to safely reach the caves. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore Park officials have needed help to handle crowds.
January 30, 2014 - MPR’s Cathy Wurzer talks with Leslie Li, producer of a documentary on the Kim Loo Sisters, a 1930’s Chinese singing group that orginated form Minneapolis. Li is the daughter of one of the Kim Loo Sisters.