You Know Youre In Minnesota When

An insiders' look at the land of 10,000 laughs--how Minneapolis became a hotspot for comedy. It is a lively look back at the wild '80s scene and the creative legacy it wrought.

An entertaining collection of 101 quintessential places people events customs lingo and eats that help define the personality of the North Star State

A chronological compendium of remarkable and curious events in the history of the North Star State

With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”

“Mesmerizing, magical, deeply moving.” —Elif Shafak Expanding on the popular podcast of the same name from On Being Studios, Poetry Unbound offers immersive reflections on fifty powerful poems. In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama’s appealing, unhurried reflections. With keen insight and warm personal anecdotes, Ó Tuama considers each poem’s artistry and explores how its meaning can reach into our own lives. Focusing mainly on poets writing today, Ó Tuama engages with a diverse array of voices that includes Ada Limón, Ilya Kaminsky, Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong, Layli Long Soldier, and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Natasha Trethewey meditates on miscegenation and Mississippi; Raymond Antrobus makes poetry out of the questions shot at him by an immigration officer; Martín Espada mourns his father; Marie Howe remembers and blesses her mother’s body; Aimee Nezhukumatathil offers comfort to her child-self. Through these wide-ranging poems, Ó Tuama guides us on an inspiring journey to reckon with self-acceptance, history, independence, parenthood, identity, joy, and resilience. For anyone who has wanted to try their hand at a conversation with poetry but doesn’t know where to start, Poetry Unbound presents a window through which to celebrate the art of being alive.

A fabulous showcase of individuals, events, and inventions that have made Minnesota.

An NPR Best Book of the Year The hilarious, charming, and candid story of writer Christopher Ingraham’s decision to uproot his life and move his family to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, population 1,400—the community he made famous as “the worst place to live in America” in a story he wrote for the Washington Post. Like so many young American couples, Chris Ingraham and his wife Briana were having a difficult time making ends meet as they tried to raise their twin boys in the East Coast suburbs. One day, Chris – in his role as a “data guy” reporter at the Washington Post – stumbled on a study that would change his life. It was a ranking of America’s 3,000+ counties from ugliest to most scenic. He quickly scrolled to the bottom of the list and gleefully wrote the words “The absolute worst place to live in America is (drumroll please) … Red Lake County, Minn.” The story went viral, to put it mildly. Among the reactions were many from residents of Red Lake County. While they were unflappably polite – it’s not called “Minnesota Nice” for nothing – they challenged him to look beyond the spreadsheet and actually visit their community. Ingraham, with slight trepidation, accepted. Impressed by the locals’ warmth, humor and hospitality – and ever more aware of his financial situation and torturous commute – Chris and Briana eventually decided to relocate to the town he’d just dragged through the dirt on the Internet. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now is the story of making a decision that turns all your preconceptions – good and bad -- on their heads. In Red Lake County, Ingraham experiences the intensity and power of small-town gossip, struggles to find a decent cup of coffee, suffers through winters with temperatures dropping to forty below zero, and unearths some truths about small-town life that the coastal media usually miss. It’s a wry and charming tale – with data! -- of what happened to one family brave enough to move waaaay beyond its comfort zone

When Jack Frost returns home to Minnesota, he meets the town's newcomer. She's bubbly, beautiful, and his latest adversary. Considering that her name is Merry Noel Blake and she was born on Christmas Eve, it's not surprising that Frost, Minnesota's newest resident, is crazy about the holiday. She has single-handedly convinced the entire town to help her turn Frost into a Christmas destination; there's a tableau of the stable in Bethlehem, a concert, many events at the church, and Merry's own holiday boutique. Jack Frost has always tried to live down his whimsical name -- a gift from his playful parents -- and he does his best to deter Merry from making what he considers a kitschy mockery of the town and the season. But she believes that below Jack's frosty exterior is a warm heart -- and that she is the one to thaw it.

Reflections on the murder of George Floyd and the uprisings that followed and on racism in Minnesota, as told by current and former residents of the state. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police officers, sparking months of unrest at home and around the world. As millions took to the streets to express their outrage and speak out against systemic racism, injustice, and institutionalized violence, the city of Minneapolis and its residents were deeply shaken. For many, George Floyd's murder and the ensuing uprisings shattered the city's reputation for progressive ideals and a high quality of life. For many others, the incident simply caught on camera a representation of the harsh realities and paradoxes that they have been living with for generations. In the words of Jasmine Mitchell, "the 'Minnesota nice' comforts and illusionary progressiveness resides upon the ignoring of White racial terrorism and fears of Blackness, brown immigrants, and resistance to White supremacy." Sparked brings together the perspectives of social scientists, professors, and other academics who work or have worked in Minnesota. The essays present reflections on racial dynamics in the Twin Cities and the intersection of the wonderful and wretched sides of that existence, revealing deep complexities, ingrained inequities, and diverse personal experiences.