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.
February 8, 1980 - Novelist Tim O'Brien's book "Going After Cacciato", inspired by his tour of duty in Vietnam during the war, won the national book award for fiction last year. O'Brien reads from his current work, "The Nuclear Age", when he was at Worthington Community College.
March 1, 1980 - The Milkweed Chronicle is not a run-of-the-mill newspaper; it is printed on stiff, durable paper and contains poems and illustrations. The paper has just published its first issue. Guests are Nancy Keating (business manager), Emilie Buchwald (editor) and Randy Scholes (art director).
March 6, 1980 -
March 7, 1980 -
March 7, 1980 - Part of the Walker Arts Center series on Modernism. The speech presents challenges faced by the writer, the reader, and the critic. Literary critic Hugh Kenner discusses the meanings of modernism.
March 8, 1980 -
March 11, 1980 - Author Susan Pearson and illustrator Charles Mikolaycak discuss children's literature and answer listeners' questions.
March 12, 1980 -
March 14, 1980 -
March 14, 1980 - Reporter Mary Stucky spoke with Andrea Hinding, the editor of a new historical reference book on American women, put out by the University of Minnesota.