In his 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, “ The Overstory ,” Richard Powers imagines a world where only a few acres of virgin forest remain on the continent. A group of strangers band together to protect those few remaining trees, and in the process, discover the trees are communicating with each other. Powers’ new novel, “ Playground ,” turns the same eye to the planet’s oceans. As he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, his hope is that the power of storytelling will ani...
Nov 08, 2024•51 min
Beloved children’s author Kate DiCamillo published three new books this year: “ Ferris ,” “ Orris and Timble: The Beginning ,” and “ The Hotel Balzaar .” She has two more coming next year — plus 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the book that started it all, “ Because of Winn-Dixie .” She is a prolific writer, a lifelong reader and a delightful human. Which made her the perfect guest to close out Talking Volumes celebratory 25th season on Tuesday, Oct. 29. Talking Volumes: Kate DiCamillo No str...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 48 min
You might know Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem that eventually became the song, “America the Beautiful,” after she visited the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado and was overcome by its beauty. But did you know she grew up a precocious youngest child in a family that struggled after the death of her father? And that she was a budding feminist who chafed at menial tasks like sewing and wished for nothing more than to be a scholar? And did you know she was only ever paid $5 for the song that would ...
Oct 25, 2024•57 min
As we approach Election Day, Big Books and Bold Ideas returns to our Americans and Democracy series. Here are some of the question we’re confronting. How nimble and flexible and resilient is our democracy? What is required of Americans to build and support a healthy democracy? Do we still want it? Eboo Patel writes in his book, “ We Need to Build ,” that a fresh manifesto for a new era in America could sound like this: “We, the varied peoples of a nation struggling to be reborn, are defeating th...
Oct 18, 2024•52 min
It’s a winter night when we first meet Tom Rourke. He’s penning love letters, preening in mirrors, pushing dope, partaking of booze, singing and flirting and fighting. It's just another night in Butte, Montana, for the feckless young Irishman. And no one writes the Irish quite like Kevin Barry. Barry’s new novel, “The Heart in Winter,” is his first set in America. But true to form, it features the Irish. That’s because, in the 1890s, Irish immigrants by the thousands descended upon the tiny fron...
Oct 11, 2024•30 min
Louise Erdrich is, without a doubt, a beloved writer. The Minnesota Native American author has won nearly every literary award out there — including a Pulitzer for “ The Night Watchman ” and a National Book Award for “ The Round House ” — and her stories captivate, haunt and delight millions of devoted readers. She can accept the praise. But the title beloved? She’s not into it. That’s just one of the many stories that unspooled over the course of Erdrich’s conversation Tuesday night on stage wi...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Novelist Alice Hoffman’s new middle grade book, “When We Flew Away,” imagines Anne Frank’s life before her family was forced into hiding. She joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on stage for Talking Volumes to talk about the emotional arc of re-creating Frank’s too-short life.
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Immigration is a hot topic this election year, and many Minnesota communities are asking questions about how to face the challenges and opportunities immigrants bring. That’s why MPR News host Kerri Miller traveled to Worthington for the final Rural Voice town hall of the 2024 season. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Nobles County, where Worthington is located, is Minnesota’s most rapidly diversifying county. In 2020, the county’s population was 43 percent people of color, up from two-thirds w...
Sep 24, 2024•1 hr 11 min
It was a celebration at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater Tuesday night, as the 25th season of Talking Volumes launched with Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat . She joined host Kerri Miller on stage to talk about the vulnerability inherent in her new book of essays, “ We’re Alone .” They also talked about the challenges facing the Haitian-American community at this moment and how Danticat’s own family — who moved to American when she was 12 — faced the immigrant journey. Speaking of the violent t...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 30 min
Farming is a bedrock industry in Minnesota. While the number of farms has been falling for decades, partly due to consolidation and partly due to crop shifts, Minnesota remains sixth in the nation when it comes to agriculture production. Could rural Minnesota communities also lead the way when it comes to conservation farming? MPR News host Kerri Miller brought that topic to Buck Mills Brewery in Detroit Lakes on Monday, Sept. 9, for a Rural Voice town hall discussion. Farmers, biologists, agric...
Sep 16, 2024•1 hr 18 min
William Moyers was one of the lucky ones. Sober for decades after years of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, he became a model of success and redemption. He started working at the Hazelden Betty Ford, and in 2006, he published a vulnerable memoir, “Broken,” about his journey out of addiction. But then he was prescribed pain killers after some dental work. And he found himself addicted again. Only this time, he had a public persona. People looked to him for hope. And he found opioids a much...
Sep 13, 2024•57 min
How do we restore trust in civic institutions and nurture a renewed sense of possibility in a shared future? That was the central question animating the Rural Voice community discussion MPR News host Kerri Miller led at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on Thursday. She was joined by political scientist and Minnesota native Brian Klaas , who set the stage by describing the bleak realities of the political landscape in America right now. People feel disempowered and divided. Trust in institutions i...
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr 23 min
The 25th season of Talking Volumes launches later this month. To celebrate, we thought we’d bring you one of our favorite conversations from last year. The 2023 season finale of Talking Volumes brought author and columnist Margaret Renkl to Minnesota hours after the first snow carpeted our Northern landscape. She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or her newest book, “ The Comfort of Crows .” In it, the self-described backyard naturalist deta...
Sep 06, 2024•52 min
The third season of Rural Voice kicked off at the Minnesota State Fair on Monday, Aug. 26. It was a steamy day, but it didn’t discourage rural change makers who gathered at the MPR booth for a lively and hopeful town hall with moderator Kerri Miller. The question before them: How is rural Minnesota changing, and how are rural communities thriving in the midst of it? Rural Voice at the Minnesota State Fair Participants included Northland Foundation CEO Tony Sertich, who emphasized that rural comm...
Aug 30, 2024•57 min
Jo Hamya’s new novel, “ The Hypocrite ,” opens as the trap is being laid. Sophia, a 20-something playwright, has invited her father, a famous and provocative British novelist, to come see her new work. As the play begins, he is shocked to realize he recognizes the set. It’s a replica of the kitchen in his vacation home near Sicily. Then the lead actor saunters onstage wearing the author’s favorite shirt and proceeds to have loud sex with a woman he just picked up at a bar. The audience roars. Th...
Aug 30, 2024•58 min
The first sentence of Frank Bruni’s new book says it all. It reads, “Let me tell you how I’ve been wronged.” More and more Americans are living mired in resentment, says Bruni, convinced that they are losing because someone else is winning. And it’s poison to our collective culture. In his new book, “ The Age of Grievance, ” he writes: “[Grievance] turns everything — beer, M&M’s, Skittles, restaurant chains, theme parks, athletic teams, athletic competitions — into cultural battlefields. For...
Aug 16, 2024•52 min
When A.J. Jacobs decided to immerse himself in early Americana, he didn’t think about the fact that the required wool stockings wouldn’t have elastic. “They would fall down to my ankles,” he laughs. “I had to put on little sock belts every morning. I’ll never get back that time.” But no matter. He was committed to getting into the headspace of the Founding Fathers, because he wanted to better understand the reasoning and the intentionality of America’s foundational document The result is his new...
Aug 08, 2024•49 min
Debut novelist Sarai Johnson created four generations of Black mothers and daughters to tackle the questions that came up in her own life: What does forgiveness look like? Can cycles of trauma be broken? Can a daughter truly leave her mother’s mistakes in the past? “ Grown Women ” expertly probes for answers via the lives of Evelyn, Charlotte, Corinna and Camille. Resentment lingers like a cancer, even as each generation of women struggles to not repeat mistakes that wound. Is it possible for th...
Aug 02, 2024•50 min
Claire Messud has long wanted to write a novel inspired by her family’s history in Algeria, thanks to a handwritten memoir, more than 1,500 pages long, penned by her paternal grandfather. It was rich with stories and history and photos about her ancestors, who were born in French Algeria but then expelled from their homes in 1962 when Algeria won its independence. Her new novel, “ This Strange Eventful History ,” was inspired by that personal past. It sprawls across generations, geography and ti...
Jul 26, 2024•52 min
New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s new novel, “One of our Kind,” is one of the most talked about books of the summer. On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Yoon joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about what led her to write a book about finding the sinister in a Shangri-La. When does our natural bent to protect and enjoy become destructive? What is the true meaning of community?
Jul 19, 2024•52 min
Lily Chen is not endowed with good fortune — despite the fact that her scientist mother managed to grow a backyard of four-leaf clovers. She doesn’t win raffles or lotteries. She scrapes out a meager living as an unpaid intern with the hopes that it might give her a shot at an entry-level gig. In short: Not lucky. But then a chance encounter upends her life and changes her idea of what fortune really is. Rachel Khong’s new book, “ Real Americans ,” is already a New York Times bestseller and one ...
Jul 12, 2024•51 min
The Civil War is remembered for its sweeping battles: Gettysburg, Atlanta, Antietam. Less known are the small troops of men, enlisted by both sides, to fight far from the battlefields. These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to sneak behind enemy lines — often wearing their opponent’s uniform — and destroyed supply lines, assassinated military officials and gathered critical information. Today, we know this kind of warfare as shadow ops — which is a specialty of military historian Patrick K. O...
Jul 05, 2024•55 min
Taiyon Coleman has been writing since she was a child. At age 8, she announced to her family that a novel was in the works. Today, she’s a published author and a professor of literature at St. Catherine University. But the road from there to here wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think. Coleman joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk about what happened in the in-between. Some of it is detailed in her new collection of personal essays, “ Traveling without Movi...
Jun 28, 2024•51 min
America is steeped in the notion of rugged individualism. It’s comforting to think success is based on our own hard work and self determination. But social scientist Robert Mark Rank says random chance governs far more of our lives that most of us want to admit. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Rank joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about his new book, “ The Random Factor .” He shares how luck and chance play a crucial role in shaping history, the natural world and our everyday live...
Jun 21, 2024•53 min
Noor Khan is still reeling from the disintegration of her family when she stumbles across a library cart stacked with books in her new small-town high school. In her heart, she just wants to finish her senior year and get back to Chicago as quickly as possible. But when she learns the books are being removed by a group of parents trying to ban literature they deem as obscene, she is enraged. Will her values force her to act, even if doing so puts a target on her back? Or is the fight not worth t...
Jun 14, 2024•57 min
Dystopian novels aren’t known for being hopeful. But that’s exactly what Leif Enger brings to the genre with his new book, “ I Cheerfully Refuse .” The beloved Minnesota author joined MPR News host Kerri Miller at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on June 4 for a special “on the road” version of Talking Volumes. Their conversation revolved around books: the unpredictable journey of writing them, the sometimes haphazard way of finding them, the way a good book leaves a mark that cannot be erased. A...
Jun 07, 2024•1 hr 24 min
What do you imagine your death will look like? It’s not a morbid or depressing question to Alua Arthur. She’s a death doula, and she firmly believes that giving thought to that question is the key to living a meaningful life. Arthur herself thinks about dying a lot. As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she has detailed plans for what she’d like her deathbed to be like. But more importantly, she says living with an awareness of mortality helps her live with intention...
May 31, 2024•55 min
Who knew boring could be an asset? In Lea Carpenter’s new spy novel, “ Ilium ,” we meet our young and restless unnamed narrator on a day when she’s urging herself to be less mundane, to take more risks. She has no idea that the spies she’ll soon be working for want her precisely because she’s inexperienced, untested and ordinary. She quickly gets pulled into a high-stakes mission against a target who has a complicated backstory when it comes to American intelligence forces. Carpenter joined spy ...
May 24, 2024•52 min
Birds, bats, freshwater mussels and a small catfish. They all slipped away in 2023 , among the 21 species declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Grief is a rational response. So are the questions novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet articulates in her new book, “ We Loved It All .” A blend of memoir and ecological truth-telling, Millet’s first nonfiction work examines what the vanishing will mean for the coming generations and for our sense of self. “No one wants to tell ou...
May 17, 2024•49 min
Big Book and Bold Ideas talks with authors from around the globe. But our favorite moments come when host Kerri Miller sits down with Minnesota writers to talk about story, craft and how calling this state home influences both. This week, we took a look back at some conversations with notable Minnesota authors, including Shannon Gibney, who just won her third Minnesota Book Award, Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang and not-ashamed-to-be-a-mystery-writer William Kent Krueger....
May 10, 2024•52 min
