This collection encompasses 50-plus years of interviews, readings, speeches, and reports on the vibrant literary scene in Minnesota. Not only home to giants F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, our state has an array of incredible contemporary poets, novelists and playwrights. Their words make up majority of this collection.
Repeatedly being 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. Many recordings of these are also included.
This project was funded by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
August 17, 1979 -
August 23, 1979 - Dick Gregory speaking before a youth session of the NAACP
August 24, 1979 -
August 29, 1979 - Michael Novak, author and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute speaks.
August 31, 1979 - Author Carol Bly of Madison, Minnesota reads from her poem "The Gift of Splendid Sound."
September 1, 1979 -
September 1, 1979 - On this regional public affairs program, Rich Dietman talks with bookseller James (Jim) Cummings, who has a collection of over 7,600 diaries in his home in Stillwater, Minnesota. Cummings has kept a personal diary since he was 13.
September 6, 1979 - A news feature of the St. Paul Library's Rare Books Collection at Highland Park Library.
September 7, 1979 -
September 12, 1979 - NPR reporter talks to members of the Twin Oaks community in Louisa County, Virginia. Twin Oaks commune was founded in the mid 1960s as a model from psychologist B.F. Skinner's utopian novel Walden Two.