April 16, 2013 - In an unlikely collaboration double Tony Award winning actor Mark Rylance joins forces with Duluth poet Louis Jenkins to create a new play about ice fishing at the Guthrie.
March 13, 2013 - MPR’s Euan Kerr reports on Penumbra Theatre mounting its first show after almost closing its doors.
March 12, 2013 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles the Penumbra Theatre staging of “Spunk,” three short stories of Zora Neale Hurston adapted by Jelly's Last Jam writer George C. Wolfe.
January 15, 2013 - A man beset with the problem of an overfull fishpond, a student who has to face a grinning skull as he eats his Froot Loops, and a young girl preparing for the Rapture which is due to begin in a couple of hours. These are all characters in Minnesota writer Scott Dominic Carpenter's new collection of short stories "This Jealous Earth." Carpenter claims the stories came about as a distraction from other writing.
August 8, 2012 - Austin Minnesota native Amanda Hocking set out to earn a couple of hundred bucks to go see a show in Chicago one summer, but ended up becoming an internet publishing sensation and multi-millionaire. Now she's made the jump to printed books with a new series about murderous Sirens. She stresses however she's just looking for a quiet life in Minnesota.
May 14, 2012 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles Twin Cities native Maya Washington, who uses a short film she created about a deaf performance poet to challenge elementary school students to think about - and perform poetry.
May 10, 2012 - Penumbra Theater is presenting James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner" at the Guthrie. Director Lou Bellamy says he's waited 30 years to do the show, but now he has all the elements he needs, including his own perspective.
May 8, 2012 - St. Paul writer Julie Schumacher's new teen novel "The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls" chronicles a long hot summer where members of a mother daughter book club get way more than they bargained for when they sign up for what they thjink is just a way to make summer reading assignments more fun. Schumacher specializes in books for and about adolescent girls. She also reveals in the novel her "Rule of 3,000" about the number of books we are likely to read in a lifetime, and how it's important to make wise book choices.
March 23, 2012 - MPR’s Euan Kerr has a conversation with acclaimed photographer Alec Soth and Minnesota writer Brad Zellar about their collaboration on story about running away. The book is titled “House of Coates” and contains photography of ‘Lester B. Morrison.’
September 23, 2011 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles Korean poet Ed Bok Lee and Vietnamese American spoken word artist Bao Phi. The poets respective works explore the Asian American experience - with a very Minnesota perspective.