There’s a before and an after to Paul Yoon’s writing life, and at the center is Oscar — a floppy, gentle, food-loving, 70-pound yellow Lab.

Yoon didn’t grow up with dogs, so it was really his wife — fellow writer Laura van den Berg — who insisted on the addition. She might have known what would happen to their buttoned-up writing life when a puppy entered it. Paul didn’t.

But he quickly fell in love with this disruptive and magical creature. It gave him a new way of looking at the world. His sixth novel is the result of that transformation.

“Etna” is about a combat dog searching for home after war ravages his unnamed country — and the whole story is told from the dog’s point of view.

It’s something Yoon wouldn’t have attempted outside of Oscar.

“Part of it was imagining what Oscar might sound like,” Yoon tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. ”I imagine him to be a dignified and empathetic creature. To me, he’s the best — so it was trying to capture what I thought were his best qualities and bring that onto the page.”

Guest:

• Paul Yoon is a writer and a professor who lives in Hudson, New York, with his wife and their dog, Oscar. His new novel is “Etna.”

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MN Shortlist is the MPR News weekly roundup of arts and culture recommendations. This week’s picks include a history of Mexican music in Minnesota, the new musical “Made in India” by local playwright Kristen Marx, the inaugural Duluth Flock ArtFest, the first Midwest Black Book Fair and more.

‘140 Years of Mexican & Latino Music in Minnesota’ at the Hennepin History Museum in Minneapolis — Through February 2028

In 1886, as Aaron Johnson-Ortiz tells it, a 56-member military band from Mexico came to perform at the inaugural Minneapolis Industrial Exposition. They performed for 41 days and even celebrated Mexican Independence Day in Minneapolis on Sept. 16, 1886, with a parade through the city.

“This would be the first cultural celebration of Mexican and Latino culture in Minnesota,” said Johnson-Ortiz, executive director of the Minnesota Latino Museum. To celebrate this untold history, the MN Latino Museum and the Hennepin History Museum collaborated on the exhibit “140 Years of Mexican & Latino Music in Minnesota,” which opened Aug. 20. The exhibit highlights historic photos, documents, banners and newspaper articles. There will be an opening reception Sept. 3. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘Bonus Joy — A New Comedy Variety Show’ at Turf Club in St. Paul — Aug. 21

A little bit of everything is on the bill at Turf Club. “Bonus Joy,” a new locally produced variety show, brings together stand-up, music and magic for a night of entertainment where you’re never quite sure what’s coming next. Minneapolis comedians Ben Katzner and Pearl Rose host, with comedy from Maggie Faris and Comrade Tripp, music from the duo Ashton & Maddock and a performance from Parker William, a comedy magician and mentalist.

The show starts at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 21 at the Turf Club in St. Paul. (Annie Russell)

Flock ArtFest — Aug. 21-22

Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth will be home to the inaugural Flock ArtFest this weekend. It’s unclear if this two-day festival is completely bird-centric, but one thing is certain: there will be improvised bird-inspired puppetry including options for “life advice from a bird” and “tarot reading from a bird.”

Other highlights: Twin Cities textile artist Sadie Ward will host an interactive art event, making a “Superior Memories” quilt using upcycled textiles from festivalgoers’ written memories of the lake. The fest will also install a towering piece of dichroic film, or an iridescent shimmering material that will provide a dreamy new lens of Superior. Chalk artist David Sundaram will transform pavement into tableaux and there will also be a kid artist tent, where artists under 14 can display and sell their wares. Flock ArtFest tickets start at $10. The festival runs Friday from 12 to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘Made in India’ at the Cowles Center for Dance & Performing Arts in Minneapolis Duluth — Aug. 21-29

The South Asian Arts & Theater House presents “Made in India,” a production that uses dance, theater and puppetry to tell the story of “an Indian-born transracial adoptee as she navigates identity, belonging, and the search for her roots.” The all-ages production includes more than 70 artists, dancers and crew members, including several South Asian adoptees and plays with many genres, from Michael Jackson to traditional and contemporary Indian dance and music. The play was written by Minnesota playwright and actor Kristen Marx and, according to the press release, it was “workshopped with parents who adopted from India, so those lived experiences are woven into the production.”

At the preview Aug. 19, director Madhu Bangalore told the audience to engage with the production. “Leave Minnesota Nice outside this,” he said. “There are times you might have to cheer, holler, hoot, cry. Let it all out. Your energy feeds the people on stage.”

Tickets are “pay what you like” with a $10 suggested donation. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘Zagaandagaa-Anishinaabeg, People of the Thick Coniferous Forest’ exhibit celebration at the Chik-Wauk Museum & Nature Center on the Gunflint Trail — Aug. 22

Near the northern border, surrounded by the boreal forest, sits the Chik-Wauk Museum & Nature Center and Gunflint Trail Historical Society.

Inside the museum, a new permanent exhibit, "Zagaandagaa-Anishinaabeg, People of the Thick Coniferous Forest," has been years in the making.

Margo Brownell, chair of the Anishinaabe Exhibit Task Force at the museum, said the exhibit tells the story of the Anishinaabe, the Ojibwe people, who lived in the area before contact with settlers, through the fur trade and into the 1900s.

“We have been incredibly fortunate in doing this exhibit to have worked with the descendants from some of these Anishinaabe families that really lived here for generations,” Brownell said.

The exhibit features a mural of Ojibwe clan animals by Sam Zimmerman, an animated video by artist Jonathan Thunder, art by Carl Gawboy, artifacts that are on display for the first time and more.

The celebration runs from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at the museum. Heads up: Though the museum's address is in Grand Marais, it’s more than an hour's drive from town, at the end of the Gunflint Trail. (Leah Lemm)

The Midwest Black Book Fair at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis — Aug. 22

Because Terresa Hardaway wasn’t busy enough, she decided to start the first Midwest Black Book Fair. Hardaway, the cofounder and owner of Blackbird Revolt, professor at the University of Minnesota and owner of Black Garnet Books (to list a few of her accolades), was in a meeting with other Black bookstore owners when it dawned on her — there isn’t an event to celebrate Black booksellers and authors in the state.

Hardaway got to work planning the event and reaching out to publishers, authors and bookstores in the region. The fair will feature two dozen particiants and organizations, along with workshops about Black literary history in Minnesota, the publishing industry and the influence of the Midwest on Black writers.

Hardaway took over Black Garnet Books in 2024 and said it’s hard for her to not think about the literacy crisis while planning the event. She hopes that people walk away excited to keep reading and get involved in bookish spaces.

“I have a responsibility to make sure that I am pushing this idea around the importance of literacy,” she said. “That should really be an agenda item for anyone who's in the literary space.”

The Midwest Black Book Fair is Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. at the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center in Minneapolis. Tickets are free, but attendees must register in advance. (Sam Stroozas)

This weekend is a first for Minnesota’s literary scene. The inaugural Midwest Black Book Fair will bring Black authors and booksellers to north Minneapolis on Saturday.

There will be food for sale, and books as well as workshops and panels. Terresa Hardaway, who’s behind the event and the owner of Black Garnet Books in St. Paul, joined Minnesota Now to give a preview.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Your local library has more to offer than a good book. A library card can connect you with job-search help, classes and events, computers, free or discounted tickets to museums and even 3D printing.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with her guests about the wide range of resources libraries provide, how to access them and how the role of public libraries is changing.

Guests:

• Jennifer Baker is community relations manager for Metropolitan Library Services Agency, or MELSA, which supports eight public library systems across the Twin Cities. She works to connect people with the resources and services available through the region’s libraries.

• Maureen Hartman is the director of St. Paul Public Libraries. She oversees its library branches, mobile library and online services.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.   

Ana Fores Tamayo is the executive director of the Refugee Support Network, a nonprofit staffed by volunteers who help refugees apply for asylum in the United States. She's also a poet. And she'll be reading from her most recent collection of poetry, the bilingual “Peregrina/Pilgrim,” on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Eat My Words Bookstore in Minneapolis.

Fores Tamayo brings a unique perspective to her work with asylum seekers; her father was a political refugee and her family moved to the United States from Cuba when she was about 5-years-old. The family settled in Miami before moving to Montana and, eventually, to Minnesota. Fores Tamayo says she's glad to once again call Minnesota home after she and her husband recently moved back to the state to be closer to their kids.

As an adult, Fores Tamayo found herself in Texas for nearly 30 years, living, working and raising a family. Texas was where she first got started with the Refugee Support Network. That experience — as well as her own experience as an immigrant — has shaped all of her written work.

“I’ve always written poetry,” she said, “but I’m very shy about it ...I just wrote for me and that was it. [When] I started doing asylum work, it was really, really hard to get it done and I needed some kind of outlet. And so I started writing poetry to kind of get it out of my system.”

“Peregrina/Pilgrim,” is Fores Tamayo’s third published collection. It’s a bilingual collection, with poems in both English and Spanish. Being able to publish her poems in both languages is, she says, “a dream.”

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Here’s how she describes her creative process: “A lot of these poems I wrote in Spanish first and then I would go back into the English and I would ... see how that differed from the Spanish, and I would change the Spanish. And so it was very, very simultaneous. And that’s why I say it’s a simultaneous translation, because it wasn’t one language interpreted to the other ... [I]t is never a translation because translation is just like word for word and it's not poetry. And when you read Peregrina and you read Pilgrim, both of them, both the Spanish and the English are poems in their own right ... I try to make the poetry sound beautiful in both languages.”

She hopes readers understand through her work that languages and cultures are to be exalted.

“They add to the framework of a city and of a state, and they make it beautiful because they add so much. And this is what this is about. Peregrina is that. It's the pilgrim coming forth, looking for a home. And hopefully finding one.”

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art.

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A twilight circus takes over Raspberry Island

Erinn Liebhard, artistic and executive director of Rhythmically Speaking, is looking forward to a one-night-only circus and cabaret performance Sunday, Aug. 23. Insomnia Salon Vol. 3: The River Night Circus takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. at Raspberry Island in St. Paul. The free event begins at twilight and is staged by Deeper Water Arts & Jackson Street Arts in partnership with St. Paul Parks. Liebhard notes that there's abundant free parking a short walk from the performance site.

Liebhard says: "This show has brought together more than 45 performers to build an amazing twilight river circus, including fire dancers, aerialists, installation artists, giant puppets, food trucks, all manner of dancers and singers and musicians, tarot card readers, and a mysterious woman who tells your fortune by creating a custom fragrance for you. I'm so excited to bring my whole family to this. The show is going to be a totally delightful end-of-summer treat."

Opera, drag and burlesque share the stage in St. Paul

Isa Condo-Olvera is an actor and singer and St. Paul. She's a fan of both opera and drag, and she says these two high-drama performance styles combine to form "an absolute blast" in An Opera Theatre's Divas & Drag: Young, Sexy, and Baroque. Now in its fifth year, An Opera Theatre has partnered with the Bach Society of Minnesota, which will provide the musical accompaniment to opera, drag, and burlesque performers. The show takes place at the Historic Mounds Theatre in St. Paul, Aug. 21 – 24.

Condo-Olvera says the combination "makes for really diverse audiences. There's the opera fans and there's the drag fans, and there's people that love both, like me. It makes for introducing new forms of art to both of those audience members, which is just so exciting and fun. It's also really fun to witness people discovering those new art forms, because the audience is such a huge part of drag."

An upcycled quilt collects memories of Lake Superior

Kristen McCoy creates designs from used clothes and textiles in Minneapolis under the brand ReThink and she wants to highlight two interactive, upcycled art opportunities at the Flock ArtFest taking place Aug. 21 and 22 at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth. Resource Renew is hosting a Free Store where people can take gently used art supplies that were locally donated. Visitors can also contribute to Minneapolis-based artist Sadie Ward's Lake Superior memories quilt project by writing their memories of Lake Superior on denim from upcycled jeans. Ward will sew the pieces into a quilt in the shape of the lake.

The choice of denim is intentional, McCoy says, not just for its shades of blue, but because cotton is a very water-thirsty crop. According to reporting from the U.N Environment Programme, making a single pair of jeans can take 800 to 1,000 gallons of water, with less efficient jeans soaking up as much as 2,600 gallons.

"I like... everything coming together on this art project for Sadie. Having that parallel of using the denim to tell the stories of water, and also [having] a place where we can hold our memories close to us as climate change is making changes to our waterways and also with human impact changing our waterways too."

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is adding new explanatory language to an exhibition after visitors mistook an artist’s digitally rendered work for generative AI.

Joe Dobrow recently took his two children to the Walker. They wandered from exhibition to exhibition, eventually settling in front of a screen in a dark hallway.

The screen was looping the 2026 video “Field Recordings” by artist Olalekan Jeyifous. It is the first solo museum exhibition for the New York-based artist who is known for his immersive speculative world-building artworks. The video features realistically animated people in leafy riverine settings, sometimes in groups, sometimes with deer, sometimes tinkering with what seem like remnants of analog technology.

“My kids were fairly intrigued with it,” Dobrow said, but “it seemed to me to be almost entirely AI slop.”

Dobrow is a software developer based in north Minneapolis and says he sees a lot of AI content in his work.

“It looked very much like someone directly, just from a prompt, created different clips and then just stitched them together,” Dobrow said. AI art is “so cheap and kind of doesn't feel like it has any value, so to see it at an art museum…”

Walker curators said that generative AI was not used to create works in “Olalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies,” which opened Aug. 6, but acknowledged that the exhibition offered little information about the digital process behind them. The museum says it’s also developing a policy governing the display and disclosure of AI-generated or AI-assisted art.

Jeyifous told MPR News that he’s not surprised that museum-goers may have confused his work for AI.

“For more than two decades, people have asked some version of, ‘How did you make this?’” Jeyifous said, pointing to his training in architecture and the digital tools of the field. “Those methods are commonplace within the discipline I emerge from, but less familiar to a general museum audience, so there has always been some uncertainty around how my images and objects are produced and that has followed me from the beginning.”

A Reddit post made on Aug. 15 in the Minneapolis subreddit, titled “AI slop alert,” claimed that the exhibition was “almost all AI content and there’s no disclosure letting guests know this.” The post racked up more than 220 comments, including one from Dobrow, who shared his disappointment. Another commenter wrote, “Art museums should be a haven from AI.”

Jeyifous says that the content of his work also may lead to confusion.

“A lot of early AI imagery skewed heavily toward science fiction and its subgenres: cyberpunk, steampunk, and any sort of speculative world-building. That overlaps visually with the sci-fi territory I’ve occupied for more than 20 years,” he said. “As AI imagery increasingly entered the broader visual culture, I anticipated that people might begin viewing my work through that lens, and even retroactively framing my earlier work as ‘AI slop,’ which has actually happened.”

As the Walker exhibition copy states, Jeyifous created a speculative river world inspired by the locale, “neither utopian nor dystopian, the enclave emerges from the histories of the Mississippi River yet exists outside of fixed time.”

In addition to videos, Jeyifous created this water world through dozens of 3D-printed black resin sculptures, CNC-milled wood panels and digital illustrations and technical illustrations printed on watercolor paper, aluminum and vinyl.

Jeyifous says he uses AI-assisted software selectively, be that Photoshop or 3D modeling. Architectural renderers often use computer-aided design programs and digital 3D visualization and modeling software to conceptualize buildings and built environments and how people move through them.

“The central principle for me, both in my practice and teaching experience, is authorship: exploring these possibilities inventively without allowing their seductive capabilities to determine the visual language, narrative or conceptual intent,” Jeyifous said. “Simply prompting images and presenting the results as my artwork is fundamentally at odds with how I’ve always worked.”

Standing in the Jeyifous exhibition, Walker curators Taylor Jasper and Henriette Huldisch said that the artist does not use AI that creates new content wholesale – audio, images, video, text – from simple prompts.

“He works extremely iteratively,” said Jasper, comparing his practice to collage. “Everything goes through multiple stages of reconceptualization, of rendering, of visualization and revisualizing and visualizing again.”

“There's a fundamental misunderstanding of what his medium actually is, and so the question of how these works were made arises often,” Jasper said. “He's academically trained as an architect, and he uses the tools of his field – which are mapping, visualization, spatial logic, rendering – to think through architecture and its impacts, and to imagine these kinds of speculative worlds and environments.”

Huldisch points out that while the artworks are not AI-generated, that does not mean there is no AI used in the process.

“It's never our intent to be misleading or secretive about an artist's process,” Huldisch said. “He uses a range of sophisticated software and tools, many of which have AI embedded within them.”

“There's art historical precedent for there being skepticism around new technologies and emerging technologies as they enter into our field,” Jasper added.

Many saw the invention of photography, for example, as a death knell to painting, but artists still paint, like Suzanne Jackson, who has her first major museum retrospective in an adjacent Walker gallery.

Artists have always used cutting-edge technology, Huldisch said, and while Jeyifous did not use generative AI for this exhibition, the museum is not opposed to working with artists who do use it.

“We will support artists working across all mediums, technologies, and follow whatever work is timely and resonant,” Huldisch said.

The exhibition’s sparse labeling may have contributed to the confusion. Visitors encounter a short introductory text about Jeyifous and the speculative world he created, but little explanation of Jeyifous’ process, digital or otherwise.

“We've obviously since then learned very quickly that people immediately jump to the assumption that generative AI must have been used in the making of the work, and people have really strong feelings about this,” Huldisch said. “So, we're listening and we're learning with our visitors, and we are adding language.”

The Walker, along with the rest of the museum world, is grappling with how to develop policy about the display and disclosure of AI-generated or AI-assisted art. “We are in the process of developing one,” she said.

Jasper and Huldisch said the new explanatory language for the exhibition will be installed this week.

“I recognize that AI usage raises very real ethical questions, and I understand why people want transparency around it,” Jeyifous said. “The difficulty right now is that we don’t have much nuance in the language to describe it. Saying that AI was utilized somewhere in a process can very quickly become perceived as ‘this artwork was entirely AI-generated,’ even when those are fundamentally different things. Disclosure can provide useful context, but it can also unintentionally become the lens through which the entire work is understood, regardless of how marginal that tool was to its production.”

How do teens imagine the future of our country and world? That's the question a group of youth poets will answer at a reading taking place Thursday at the Bell Museum.

It's the culmination of a program that spanned several weeks where a group of teens took workshops and received mentorship from adult writers. In that time, they reflected on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. and were prompted to imagine the world they want to see.

Knox Frederickson is one of the teen poets and a rising senior. Amanda Rosas is one of the mentors and a teacher at Visitation School. They talked with MPR News host Nina Moini and shared pieces of their work.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

In his office at the Guthrie Theater, several posters from past shows line Joseph Haj’s walls. One from a production of “Angels in America” that he starred in while in Venice in 1995. Another from a production of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” which he did at the Guthrie in 1990. And on the far side of his office, behind his desk are the scripts from the plays he’s directed over the last 10 years at the Guthrie.

“I do storyboard, especially if they're big-scale plays,” Haj said of his directorial process.

“Storyboard is probably an extravagant term because it suggests that I can draw, which I can't,” Haj said in his usual self-effacing tone.

Haj is more than a resident director, though. He holds a role many covet—artistic director of one of the nation’s leading regional theaters. The role oversees one of the founding companies in the nonprofit American regional theater movement. A theater that over the last 62 years has been a beacon of artistic excellence and has drawn in talent from across the world.

For the last ten seasons, Haj has been at the helm of this Argo—upholding the standard of art the theater is known for and correcting course when the financial winds get blustery. In some ways, his time at the Guthrie has mirrored that of the first play he ever directed for the company—“Pericles, Prince of Tyre.”

“I was so proud of that production,” Haj said. “I thought it was some of my very strongest work.”

It’s an obscure play in William Shakespeare’s canon; a swashbuckling adventure about a Phoenician prince, faced with solving the catastrophes that lie before him—like a famine and a devastating shipwreck. Like Pericles, Haj has weathered mighty storms.

Act I: The measure of a man

Ask Haj about leadership, and he’ll point to art.

“Everything I do, I view through the lens of an artist,” Haj said.

The moments Haj comes to life are when he is able to talk about the craft with other theater makers. When he was directing “Somewhere” in the fall of 2025, a conversation with the playwright Matthew Lopez had him as light as a feather and as merry as a schoolboy.

Haj, however, has a hard time with being labeled a particular kind of artist.

“I think artists get frustrated when people put them in boxes,” said Haj. “But I think as artists we put ourselves in boxes more often than we would like… I squirm at being overly defined as an artist.”

“He is really, really interested in how language moves a play forward, and how to craft the spoken text in a way that is meaningful,” said Addie Gorlin-Han, an associate producer at the Guthrie Theater who was mentored by Haj early in her directing career.

This love for language comes through in Haj’s self-professed favorite shows, which include many of Shakespeare’s plays, Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”—which Haj is directing this fall. That interest in language started in his youth. He grew up in Miami, the son of Palestinian immigrants.

“I remember actively learning English,” Haj said, noting his first language is Arabic. “The way words felt in my mouth, the way language resonated for me, the miracle of language. I mean, you know, it's 26 letters and some punctuation, and the fact that whole worlds are built around it felt then—and feels now—as somewhat miraculous.”

His appreciation for language was also aided by his father, who was blind. Due to this, Haj would often read to his father—sometimes these were high-level materials connected to his father’s postdoctoral work as an educator. That experience also plays into how Haj approaches his work as an artist, according to Gorlin-Han.

“I think that has really been a big part of how he understands equity and responsibility to make all audiences feel welcome and create accessible opportunities into the art,” she said.

Despite having educators for parents, Haj wasn’t a star student. By his own admission, he flunked out of most of his classes senior year. However, there was one subject he loved—theater.

“I had no skill or talent, but I wanted it so badly. For whatever reason, it just vibrated with me in a particular way,” Haj said.

While he didn’t complete his senior year, Haj was able to fake some transcripts, with the help of a friend, to attend community college.

Haj admits he was a bit queasy to admit his actions, even now. “Not that it’s untrue…I just want to make sure I’m not getting anybody in trouble.”

He eventually transferred to Florida International University and went on to attend graduate school at the University of North Carolina for acting, before launching a career as an actor and director.

As a theater maker, he performed and directed across the country—including as an original member of Anne Bogart’s SITI Company, and as a member of the Guthrie's standing acting company in 1989-1990 season. He was also involved with projects inside prisons and in Palestine. Across his career, Joseph Haj has always looked for a new challenge to face—and his interests would eventually turn to artistic leadership.

Act II: The early voyages of Joseph Haj

Haj’s first job as the head of a theater was as the producing artistic director of PlayMakers Repertory Company, a well-regarded company that’s affiliated with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s theater school—his alma mater.

“There's no training to be an artistic director,” Haj said. “So we all come into it idiosyncratically based on our own experiences. And my experience… was as somebody who's been a practicing artist.”

At PlayMakers, Haj’s tenure included turning the theater’s finances around. He also began programming more plays, some of them quite extravagant. One season, he produced “Amadeus” in collaboration with a full orchestra to play the music of Mozart that is central to the show. In another, he directed a seven-and-a-half hour version of Charles Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby.”

“It was truly epic,” said Jeff Cornell, an actor and longtime associate of PlayMakers. “[It was] 25 actors, playing over 150 parts. And [Haj] was asking this company to do more than it perhaps thought it could do.”

That style of ambitious theater became a signature for Haj over his nine years with the company. He would produce and direct massive productions of “The Tempest” and "Metamorphoses," as well as both plays in the “Angels in America” cycle. However, according to Adam Versényi, the resident dramaturg at PlayMakers and former department chair at UNC, those big shows proved to be a strain on a theater the size of PlayMakers.

“While we were very proud of the scale of those productions and the quality of them, they did overtax the company,” Versényi said.

While Haj loved his position in North Carolina, a larger theater with opportunities to tackle new challenges waited just beyond the horizon.

Act III: Arriving on the beaches of Minneapolis

Haj was announced as the new artistic director of the Guthrie in the winter of 2015, only the 8th person to ever hold the title. At the time, he was something of a dark horse candidate for the job. He didn’t even appear on some media outlets’ shortlist of possible replacements for outgoing artistic director Joe Dowling. Some had speculated—and hoped—that Oskar Eustis, a major figure in American theater who grew up in Minnesota, would take the reins.

A fable told by Guthrie staff is that when Haj was first introduced, he remarked how he was not who people were expecting.

“I wish I could remember the exact words,” Haj said, confirming the story by saying he said something to the effect of ‘I know you’re all sad it’s not Oskar Eustis.’

Coming into the job, Haj was determined to take on managing a theater with an operating budget of nearly $30 million—ten times the budget he was working with at PlayMakers. His history as an actor at the Guthrie was noted at the time of his hiring, however, he had yet to direct a mainstage production. To make clear who he was, Haj turned to Shakespeare’s “Pericles.”

“I think it's a very great play,” said Haj. “It is a play filled with wisdom…this is one of Shakespeare's last four or five plays that he ever wrote. He's writing at the very pinnacle of his significant gifts.”

Haj had a long history with the Shakespeare play. He acted in a production in New York, had directed a version of it for PlayMakers in 2008, and then directed it again at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, before it transferred to the Folger Theater in D.C. In the usual grandness of Haj’s productions, the show had a spectacular set.

“He's not afraid to make a bold design choice if we can afford it,” said Jan Chambers, who designed most of Haj's versions of Pericles over the years.

“Sometimes we couldn't afford it,” said Chambers.

Haj remounted “Pericles” for his Guthrie debut. In Minneapolis, Addie Gorlin-Han served as his assistant director. She remembers being mentored by Haj during the process, but also being treated like a colleague. She recalls offering suggestions to him, which she said he would take into consideration.

“He took them seriously, which he did not have to do, and not all directors do,” Gorlin-Han said. She also remembers that the weight of the moment hit Haj on opening night.

“He turned to me and he's like, ‘This is a night I will never forget,’ because it was the first night of his work on the Guthrie stage as a director,” said Gorlin-Han.

Similarly, Jan Chambers admires Haj for the doors he opened for her when he hired her to work on several projects with him.

“I had been designing for a number of years in academia and occasionally freelancing,” Chambers said. “He really opened up a whole new world for me, professionally. I owe him that for sure.”

Act IV: The making of a king

Aside from his artistic feats at the Guthrie, Haj has had to navigate the theater through similar challenges as his royal Phoenician counterpart. A major round of layoffs took place in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic, and like many arts organizations post-pandemic, the Guthrie Theater was facing significant financial headwinds. A $4 million deficit was announced in 2024. However, unlike other institutions, the Guthrie turned around its situation in two years and announced a modest surplus in 2026.

Trisha Kirk is the Guthrie Theater’s managing director—a role that oversees more of the operational elements of the organization, and reports to Joseph Haj. In her opinion, without Haj’s leadership, the financial turnaround would not have been as quick.

“It wasn't easy. It was making sacrifices all over the place that Joe and I and the team spent a lot of time trying to figure out,” Kirk added.

The solutions Haj, Kirk and the company came up with ranged from small changes—such as reducing the size of show programs to save on printing costs—to larger ones, like producing one less show each season.

Haj’s collaborative style of leadership started long before the financial crisis, however. Coming out of the pandemic, Haj expanded the roster of his inner circle, and created a “senior leadership team,” consisting of subject matter experts who could provide the best insights to different aspects of the theater’s operations. Kirk can’t remember there being another formal committee like that in her 40 years at the Guthrie.

“I think [what] you really see in Joe as a leader, [is] that he is looking to hear from people,” said Kirk.

Kirk also highlighted Haj’s leadership in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion. In January 2020, the theater created its “Native Advisory Council,” to strengthen its ties to Minneapolis’ Native community.

For all the praise his coworkers give him, however, Haj has a hard time claiming any sort of glory in his leadership.

“I would love to tell a story of brilliant and heroic leadership, but it's not like that at all,” Haj said. “One tries to make the very best decisions one can, sometimes under uncommonly difficult circumstances.”

That kind of humbleness comes through in many aspects of his personality. During the lead up to the premiere of "The History Plays” in 2024, when asked how he felt that his multi-year magnum opus was coming to a fruition, he said “Some of us get much more than we deserve.”

For Haj, the story is less about him as a singular talent and more about the Guthrie as an institution.

“Your kid's been admitted to Princeton,” he said. “The parent doesn't say, ‘Hey, pump the brakes… who's the president of Princeton right now?’ Nobody says this. Princeton is the story.”

Ten seasons into Haj’s tenure, he would say the same of the Guthrie.

Frank Beard, the drummer for the Texas boogie-rock trio ZZ Top who kept the tempo for the band’s biggest hits like “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs” and “Gimme All Your Lovin,’” has died. He was 77.

Beard was in hospice care when he died Tuesday at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, with family members at his side, according to publicist Bob Merlis. Band co-founder and guitarist Billy Gibbons, on tour with bassist Elwood Francis, hailed Beard in a statement.

“Today, Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas. His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top. The band of which he was part for six decades is going to keep on keeping on as he had wished,” Gibbons said.

ZZ Top sold more than 50 million records and had six singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. Seven of their albums have been in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 and they earned three Grammy Award nominations.

“I’ve found the people I was meant to play with,” Beard says in the 2019 documentary “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas.” “I never wanted to quit, and never wanted to get fired.”

Minnesota’s tourism arm is trying to jumpstart the state’s film industry — and a brand-new fund is helping local filmmakers get to the silver screen.

The “10,000 Stories Fund” by Explore Minnesota Film and FilmNorth has picked 10 filmmaking teams to receive $10,000 to help create their work.

Nell Lawrenz-Wareham, deputy director of Explore Minnesota Film, and filmmaker Alex Nystrom, who is a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and one of the recipients of the fund, joined Minnesota Now to share more about the effort.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Terresa Hardaway says above all, she’s a connector. She thrives when building relationships and organizing and prefers to stay busy, hence her long resume including co-founder and owner of Blackbird Revolt, a social-justice based design studio; associate professor of graphic design at the University of Minnesota; and owner of Black Garnet Books.

She was attending a monthly Black Bookstore Coalition meeting when the group got to talking about book festivals, and it struck her: Minnesota doesn’t have an event to celebrate Black booksellers and authors.

“I was just looking around at all these like really amazing Black women who are doing this really important work in the literary space, and I'm like, we need to. It's just been on my heart. We need to do something,” she said.

Hardaway decided to launch and curate the first Midwest Black Book Fair.

She and her team got to work planning the fair, an event to honor stories of resistance and Blackness. The inaugural event takes place Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. at the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center in Minneapolis.

The fair will highlight about two dozen people and organizations, including Black authors, Black-owned bookstores, collectives and publishers focused on Black perspectives, and more. Hardaway and others are hosting workshops about Black literary history in Minnesota, how to get published and the influence of the Midwest on Black writers. As of last week, over 800 tickets had been reserved.

Mary Taris, the founder and owner of Strive Publishing & Bookstore in Minneapolis, will be at the fair. She said when Hardaway mentioned the event to her, she knew she had to be a part of it. It’s also special to her that the inaugural fair is in north Minneapolis.

“I’m from north Minneapolis, and I really wanted my bookstore to be in north Minneapolis, but that didn’t come to fruition. But being able to host our inaugural Midwest Black Book Fair in north Minneapolis is just incredible to me,” she said.

“I just really hope that everyone comes out for the Black book fair. No matter what background you are, come out and learn all about what's going on in the literary scene in the Midwest in terms of Black voices.”

Hardaway said she chose to host the event toward the end of the summer to coincide with Black August, an annual month-long commemoration that honors the lives of Black revolutionaries and activists. She also didn’t want to compete with Independent Bookstore Day in April.

“I think that is an important day for all independent bookstores. But I do think there is something about celebrating Black stories and narratives during Black August,” she said.

Tickets are available for free but attendees must register in advance. There will be free parking at NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center.

Like many readers of mysteries and thrillers, Jackie Fuchs of The Book Keepers in Hutchinson loves to try to figure out whodunnit and why, and she appreciates a book that keep her guessing. That was the case with Taylor Adams' thriller "Her Last Breath."

“Every time I thought I figured out, it took us the other way,” Fuchs said.

This is not a book for the claustrophobic, unless, like Fuchs, you believe in exposure therapy through reading.

The book centers on Allie and Tess, who have been best friends since high school. Allie is the adventurous traveler of the two, and she convinces Tess to join her in exploring a cave. At the cave entrance, they encounter a creepy fellow spelunker.

Allie’s response to this stranger sets him off, and soon Tess is trapped in a cave with a murderer. The novel jumps between Tess’s harrowing experience in the cave and her debrief with a detective afterwards.

“So you get moments of reprieve out of the cave with those moments with the detective, but also you’re getting more questions because what Tess is saying and what the detective is asking— and the things the detective is not saying — [all] lead to more questions. You want to get back in that cave...even though you don't want to get back in that cave,” she said.

Spirit Lake Nation citizen Marlena Myles grew up in south Minneapolis in the Native American housing development, Little Earth of United Tribes. Growing up, she attended a school focused on Native American culture within its programming.

“Outside of those areas, I never really saw anything that showed that this was Dakota homelands here in the Twin Cities and Minnesota. And so, as an adult, I create all kinds of art that teaches people about our relationship to the land,” Myles said.

This year, she designed MPR’s state fair tote bag, which features vibrant colors and pays homage to each corner of Minnesota through an Indigenous lens. The special gift is given to thousands of fairgoers in exchange for donations.

Myles says she wants to create meaningful artwork that uplifts and gives a sense of representation to those who see it.

“A lot of my art, when I create it, I like it to serve a purpose,” she said.

Myles has been an artist for as long as she can remember. Growing up, she watched her mother, grandmothers and aunts create beadwork and traditional Dakota arts. She pursued digital art with encouragement from her mother.

Her artwork has been featured in classrooms, on building murals in the Twin Cities and even on Metro Transit buses. Plants, animals or spiritual beings are often featured in her work. She uses her creativity to present the world through a Dakota perspective.

“I’m always putting [in] the significance of plants, and place and spirits. Anything I can to let people see that there’s an interconnectedness between all life and everything that’s around us,” she said.

Myles made sure that connection between people and land is shown on this year’s MPR tote bag. The artwork features an outline of Minnesota in the color blue, representing the state’s lakes.

“In Dakota culture, blue also represents the spirit of life and the things that flow through us that give us the energy to do what we have to do in this lifetime,” she said.

The state design is divided into four quadrants, each region showcasing a specific aspect of the state. Myles chose symbols that remind her of those areas, like the buffalo at Blue Mound State Park in southwestern Minnesota or bird migrations along the Mississippi River in the southeast.

“The northwest. You know, that’s where I think of wild rice. I think of fishing,” Myles said. “And then the northeast is where the darkest skies in the nation are, so you can see the stars, like how our ancestors saw the stars.”

A purple and yellow loon — a nod to the colors of the Minnesota Vikings and singer Prince — is layered over the state’s outline. "Mni Sota Makoce," the Dakota name for Minnesota, which means “where the land reflects the sky,” is printed in purple, blue, yellow and red.

“I didn’t want something neutral,” said Myles. She designed the bag to “stand out in a fashionable way.”

She hopes that her artwork can bring awareness to Minnesota's Indigenous heritage and that all Minnesotans can see themselves and what they love about the state in it as well.

“When you’re creating art for the public, you want to represent the communities and tell the stories that represent those communities, and you also want to go deeper and reveal these layers of knowledge that people might not see or know.”

The MPR tote bag will be available at the MPR booth inside the Minnesota State Fair through Labor Day.

Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.

Hayden Panettiere, who starred in television series "Heroes" and "Nashville" has died, her representative confirmed to NPR in a statement.

In a statement by Panettiere's father, shared by Panettiere's representative, he said:

"It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her— and to the millions who watched her onscreen," the statement said. "We ask for privacy as our family takes time to process this unimaginable loss."

A child actor since she was cast in various commercials as an 11-month-old, Panettiere grew into a prolific actress starring in soap operas, TV series and movies, including "Remember the Titans," as well as "Normal" and "Scream."

She was best known for her role as the country music star Juliette Barnes in the series "Nashville," a role that she said at times closely resembled her own life.

"I stopped being able to tell where the character started and where, you know, I ended like we were just mushed together," she told NPR's All Things Considered in an interview in May.

The role earned Panettiere two Golden Globe nominations in 2013 and 2014 in the Best Supporting Actress category.

Earlier this year, Panettiere published her memoir, "This is me: A reckoning," where she described her longing for a "normal childhood" as a child actor, her want to "fit in." Panettiere also shared her struggle with addiction and depression, and their impact on her relationship with her daughter and her partner, former Ukrainian boxing world champion Wladimir Klitschko.

Panettiere said the book's purpose was to share "my stories and my traumas and… the things that I've been through, my obstacles," to "help others overcome theirs and make them feel like they're not so alone."

"I was trying to fit into two different worlds. One was a very adult world, which was the industry, and one was the world of just being a normal kid, and (I) struggled with both in different ways," she told NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer. But I desperately wanted to fit in. That's what I wanted more than anything."

Panettiere died in South Carolina at 36.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Minnesotans have long debated the meaning of “Up North.” Is it everything north of Duluth, or north of Mille Lacs? Are pine trees and lakes a prerequisite? What about loons? Or is it more of a perception — a place defined not so much by location but by mindset?

Sigurd Olson wrote his beloved book, “The Singing Wilderness,” to describe the beauty and wildness he saw in what came to be known as The Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He wrote: “The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of loons, with northern lights, and the great silences of land lying northwest of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life which is close to the past.”

Cal Flyn has never been to the Boundary Waters, but she resonates with Olson’s definition. A writer based in the isles off the coast of Scotland, Flyn climbed mountains, plunged into forests and helicoptered to volcanoes for her new book, “The Savage Landscape.” But more than the nature itself, she’s intrigued by how we recognize and preserve these wild places.

“There is no obvious visual marker that announces one’s arrival in a wilderness,” she writes, “and thus, the search never truly ends.”

Flyn joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about what we mean when we say wilderness and why that definition matters.

Guest:

• Cal Flyn is a Scottish journalist and writer. Her new book is “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness.”

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Archivist songstress Jayanthi Rajasa sings under an oak tree in St. Paul, a Lanesboro theater stages a musical based on an indie 90s hit, comedian Dulce Sloan (of NPR’s “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”) comes to the Parkway in Minneapolis and more in this week’s MN Shortlist.

‘Free Your Mind’ concert at Amsterdam Bar and Hall in St. Paul — Aug. 14

While artists like Dessa and Lady Midnight have shown that Minnesota has strong and passionate Latino musicians, the reputation of Minnesota as a hub of Latino music, in my opinion, has yet to take off.

Lots of other local artists are making their rounds at bars and restaurants such as St. Paul’s Amsterdam Bar and Hal l— which will be home to an eclectic collection of Latino bands Friday.

“Free Your Mind” is billed as a set of three “Twin Cities Latino bands expressing their music with diverse influences and backgrounds.” The lineup includes Calavrosa, which blends trippy guitar riffs, Latin beats and bongos, the more avant-garde Los Pinches Güeys, and Yuca Frita, which describes itself as a bilingual ska, cumbia and funk band.

Be ready to jump from genre to genre with each band as you dance and vibe out to a diverse sampling of what Minnesota’s Latino music scene has to offer. (Jacob Aloi)

Dulcé Sloan at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis — Aug. 14

If you listen to MPR News on the weekends, you probably know Dulcé Sloan is a regular panelist—and fan favorite—on “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” the weekly NPR news quiz. But she is also known for her cutting humor on TV shows like “Great North” and “The Daily Show.” Sloan is bringing her signature comedy, drawing on everything from her international travels as a big Black woman to her intimate relationships, to the Parkway Theater for one night only.

If you miss her in person, you can usually catch her on “Wait, Wait…” on MPR News, Saturdays at 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m. (Jacob Aloi)

Bienvenidos Dystopia at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis — Aug. 15

Imagine this: It’s some unknown year in the future in a post-revolution America and you’re looking back at the remnants of 2026 through the lens of nine Twin Cities artists and musicians. Bienvenidos Dystopia has entered the chat. The annual event, which promotes itself as a dance party-variety show-salon mashup, promises an evening to “celebrate Minneapolis arts and culture before it’s all gone.”

Each artist and musician will give a five-minute presentation of their work, including allison anne on their collages; Jamie Schumacher Kalakaru-Mava on her illustration and writing; and Zak Sally (former bass player for Low-turned-comic artist) on his drone project.

“It's not just people standing up and giving boring lectures,” said event co-curator Taylor Carik, a media theorist, musician and political consultant. “It's really short presentations about people's artwork and how technofeudalism impacts their lives.”

Carik added, “Then we have kind of a party to let people mingle and discuss what they learned and what their thoughts are, and dance to feel better about themselves after some dark humor.”

Bienvenidos Dystopia is set against the backdrop of an exhibition of Soviet-era posters with the mugs of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and slogans like “For Motherland!” and “Let’s Fulfill our Plans of Great Work” at the Museum of Russian Art. “The juxtaposition will hopefully be one of the best parts of the event,” Carik said. The event runs from 7 to 10 p.m. and tickets are $14-$20. (Alex V. Cipolle)

Cannon River Clay Tour in Northfield — Aug. 15-16

Minnesota is a great state for clay and for pottery pilgrimages, from the St. Croix River Valley Pottery Tour in the spring to the biennial autumn kiln firing in Collegeville. Next up is the 10th annual Cannon River Clay Tour in Northfield and the surrounding area. The self-guided tour includes three stops.

There’s Eureka Pots in Farmington, home studio of longtime potters Colleen Riley and Donovan Palmquist, who make a colorful and textured assortment of dishes, vases, teapots, mugs and other homewares.

In Northfield proper is the studio of Kelly Connole, an art professor at Carleton College who makes the most mysterious and anthropomorphic ceramic rabbits. Both stops include the work of many other established artists, some more off-center than others, like the goopy concoctions of Margeaux Claude, the playful objects of Amy Sanders and shattered and shadowy sculptures of Monica Rudquist.

One more stop is Larchill Farm in Northfield, which will show the work of emerging ceramic artists. (Alex V. Cipolle)

Jayanthi Rajasa at the Grand Oak Opry in St. Paul — Aug. 15

There’s nothing like listening to live music outside under the shade of a big old tree in the drowsy days of summer. The Grand Oak Opry hosts backyard concerts under a centuries-old oak in the West 7th neighborhood of St. Paul. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, Jayanthi Rajasa, who last performed in the concert series nine years ago, will take the stage. The Twin Cities artist describes herself as an “archivist songstress” and a griot, or an oral historian in the West African tradition.

There are no tickets, but the Opry requests a $15 donation; it says 100 percent of the proceeds go to the artist. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘The Spitfire Grill’ at Commonweal Theatre Company in Lanesboro — through Oct. 24

If you’re familiar with my theater coverage, you know I have an appreciation for theatrical adaptations. Whether a book, movies or TV shows is turned into a hit musical or play, there’s a special kind of mastery to making a good adaptation for the stage. So I was surprised to learn that the musical “The Spitfire Grill,” which Commonweal Theatre Company in Lanesboro is currently producing, was based on a film from the 1990s.

The musical premiered in 2001 Off-Broadway and has since made the rounds at regional theaters. Commonweal Theatre Company in Lanesboro opened its production earlier this summer. It tells the story of Percy, a young woman recently released from prison who tries to reinvent herself in a sleepy Wisconsin town that is seeking its own renewal.

In her director’s note for the show, Adrienne Sweeney said that when picking the shows, the theater asks, “why this play, why now?”

“When I read ‘The Spitfire Grill,’ I knew immediately,” she wrote. “What we need right now is its message of hope, the possibility of redemption and the transformative power of community.” (Jacob Aloi)

Erica Helander never expected to work in archives or preservation. But stacks of posters and signs ranging in size and message told a different story. In April, they covered tables and leaned against walls in the living and dining rooms of the home she shares with her in-laws.

These signs came from protests over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Operation Metro Surge.

Helander began to put out calls to collect posters for The Rebel Loon Archive, an organization she started as she saw the vast amount of art being created during the months of protests and fear.

She was inspired by the way the Rebel Loon, a Rochester artist’s depiction of Minnesota’s state bird with its wings outstretched, caught fire in the art world, appearing on shirts, signs and tattoos.

For her, drawing is less of a preferred medium. She was a stay-at-home mom with a 4-year-old and infant when the federal immigration enforcement surge ramped up.

A jeweler by trade who also has a background in writing, she turned to poetry to pour out her anxiety. And as she started to share her poems on social media, she was encouraged to document her writing offline so she began to create a short book of poetry.

"I want this to be part of something larger," she said. "I know that my art is powerful, and it's more powerful in community, just like all of us are."

She began to ask artists on social media and by email if she could archive and publish their work nonexclusively through a right of reproduction agreement, allowing artists to publish their work elsewhere.

"These people poured their grief, their rage, their fear, and their hope and their love into this art, and just threw it up on the internet," Helander said. "Collecting this art is such an honor for me."

The goal quickly became ensuring what was being made and posted wasn't lost to the internet.

“If it's just on social media, optimistically, give it a week or two weeks, it's going to be so far down in the algorithm that you're going to have to scroll down to find it,” Helander said. “It's going to functionally be lost.”

The book became the archive's way of creating something physical from these digital primary sources. The small book of poetry that started as a 30-page stapled booklet, grew into a hardcover 8 ½ by 11-inch, 250-page-coffee table book. It features 300 local, national and international artists.

That broad approach to who was featured reflected how the Minnesota story of ICE's impact was being told, Helander said.

"This is not about how many followers you have. This is about human rights, human dignity, and your right to speak truth as an artist," she said. "Your right to say here's my experience and here's what happened,” she said.

The artwork is divided into nine segments that follow chronologically and thematically. Each begins with an essay by an expert. Helander believed it was necessary to share not only each artifact, but also its meaning.

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A June online fundraising campaign for the book quickly surpassed Helander's expectations. She opened a second online ordering window, that again drew sales she hadn't anticipated.

Helander has even heard from educators and libraries about opportunities to make the book accessible to students.

Over 1,225 physical copies and 59 e-books have been preordered. Net proceeds from book sales will support the Immigrant Defense Network.

Each artist featured in the book will receive a copy.

As for the physical artifacts, she collected posters and signs from across the Twin Cities, carrying them in trash bags to keep them dry. Those posters have been shown in art exhibitions in Minnesota and across the country. The Rebel Loon Archive is working to digitize all artifacts and pieces of artwork so it can be accessed by anyone online.

After the book’s September release, Helander said the archive's next project will be about the Boundary Water Canoe and Wilderness.

For Helander, the archive is more than just preserving art. It also means protecting the voices of people willing to challenge those in power.

“Those are voices that get shut down because art is dangerous,” Helander said “Art mobilizes people. Art can heal us, and art tells the truth, which is the scariest thing to people using their power in a way that they shouldn't.”

Faribault in the 1920s must have been a uniquely amusing place. Inventor Herbert Sellner was running around the southern Minnesota town, using the family home, the yards of friends and neighbors, the fairgrounds and the lakes around Rice County as staging grounds to experiment with his contraptions.

In 1922, he created the water toboggan, a giant slide that looked like an old-timey roller coaster descending into a lake. Sellner set one up at Roberds Lake just northeast of town. It became such a big hit that Sellner got orders from all over the U.S., as well as France, Switzerland and beyond. It was considered the precursor to all the water slides to come.

“He mentions he had a call from Jamaica to be able to get one of their water toboggan slides sent out there,” said Jenna Nelson as her finger followed a handwritten note from Sellner. Nelson, the curator for the Rice County Historical Society, flipped through a copy of Sellner’s journal and rattled off dates and amusement rides.

There was “The Swooper,” which had an elongated oval shape.

“It almost looks like a squashed version of a Ferris wheel,” Nelson said, laughing. “That one, unfortunately, did not take off.”

Then came another experiment at a local lake.

Herbert “created a water merry-go-round and, basically, one boat was driving, and all the other boats were tied together,” Nelson said. “It got destroyed by a storm in 1925.” Herbert’s brother, Martin Sellner, suggested adapting it for land.

In January 1926, Sellner started sketching drawings for this new ride, calling it the Tilt-ulator. On April 24, he filed a patent in Minneapolis, and a month later, according to Sellner’s notes, he had made a significant change: The new ride — with nine cars, as one advertisement put it, “tilting, sweeping, spinning, swooping, swaying, speeding, sliding, skidding, rounding, rotating, rising, revolving, hesitating, flying, falling, curving and circling” — would be called the Tilt-A-Whirl.

By Sept. 3, Sellner’s Tilt-A-Whirl was up and running at the Minnesota State Fair. Rides cost 15 cents a pop.

“That's pretty impressive, being that he invented it that year as well,” said Keri Huber, the archivist for the State Fair. “I just love that Minnesota innovation, and the State Fair was like, ‘Yes, let's have it!’”

A century later, a Tilt-A-Whirl still operates at the State Fair, as well as Valleyfair, where it was one of the original rides when the amusement park opened in Shakopee in 1976. Since 1926, Huber estimates that over 1,000 Tilt-A-Whirls have been manufactured and bought all across the country for boardwalks, county fairs, carnivals and amusement parks.

The State Fair is celebrating the ride’s centennial with a history walking tour in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society. The fair’s Tilt-A-Whirl, which is now located at the Kidway, will be one of the stops. Some crop artists have also taken note of the milestone, creating seed mosaics of the Tilt-A-Whirl for the fair’s competition exhibition in the Ag-Hort building.

A Faribault icon

In Faribault, where the Rice County Historical Society is also celebrating its centennial, Jenna Nelson says the museum is preparing to overhaul its Tilt-A-Whirl and Sellner Manufacturing Company exhibit, which will reopen in 2027.

Sellner Manufacturing was the amusement ride company Herbert Sellner founded after working in furniture design and toy manufacturing with his father Frederick Sellner, who had immigrated with his mother Charlotte from Germany in the 1880s. Herbert was born in Faribault 1887.

The current exhibit is small, featuring some Sellner family history, a few designs for toys and lamps, a model car for the Tilt-A-Whirl and some discussion of its iterations. The earliest versions of the ride were made mostly of wood and featured nine cars.

Over the years, it was paired down to seven cars and wood gave way to steel and fiberglass, developing the car’s iconic half-egg dome shape. There are variations too, such as “Barrels of Fun” (the cars shaped like old wood barrels) and the “Berry-Go-Round” (shaped like strawberries).

There’s also documentation of the evolution of Sellner Manufacturing. In 1927, Herbert was diagnosed with leukemia and given only a few years to live. He died at the age of 42 in 1930, leaving behind his wife Frieda and two sons. Before his death, Herbert built a factory and convinced his brother Martin to take over operations, which remained in the family until Sellner Manufacturing sold to a Texas company in 2011.

Nelson said the museum is expanding the display because its collections have so much more to show, such as colorful illustrated advertising brochures that Sellner Manufacturing printed in the 1920s.

One guarantees that the Tilt-A-Whirl is “as safe as grandma’s rocker,” and includes reviews like, “Tilt-A-Whirl is creating furor and produces revenue like an oil well,” reported by Billboard magazine in 1928. (Fun fact: In the early 20th century, before becoming a music industry publication, Billboard used to report on circuses, fairs and burlesque shows).

There are the journals, too, which Herbert wrote in almost daily, about his progress with inventions, materials and going back and forth to the patent office in Minneapolis. His patent for the Tilt-A-Whirl wasn’t actually approved until 1930.

“For what I would think of as an inventor, he has pretty meticulous records from day to day, which is kind of surprising to me, even if it's shorthand notes that he's writing down,” Nelson said.

Nelson said she wishes there were more personal stories on record about Herbert.

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“Obviously, there's that component of fun that he's interested in. He's developing these toys. He's developing these amusement rides. So there's some component there of just kind of generally being interested in creating things for families to do,” Nelson said. “I’ve got to imagine it was a part of his personality. He seems like he would be a fun guy.”

A crop art ode, or ‘that pure joyous feeling that you get in your stomach when it's spinning’

Herbert’s legacy lives on around Faribault. In the historic downtown, there are two vintage Tilt-A-Whirl cars with plaques on street corners. The exterior wall of the Paradise Center for the Arts features a large mural honoring the ride. Herbert’s legacy also lives on across the U.S., like at the Jersey Shore, where the Minneapolis-based artist Robin Schwartzman first encountered the Tilt-A-Whirl as a kid.

“That's my favorite ride,” she said. “There’s lots of love for the Tilt-A-Whirl in my life.”

Schwartzman, who moved to Minnesota in 2008, designs playgrounds and mini-golf courses. She will be entering a crop art piece that celebrates the 100th anniversary of her favorite ride to the State Fair crop art competition exhibition.

“I found out that it was invented in Minnesota,” she said. “Plus, it's like a fair classic, so I was like, ‘I have to celebrate that.’”

Schwartzman grew up in Pennsylvania and recalled going on family summer vacations to the Jersey Shore and riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Fantasy Island amusement park. In high school and college, she worked as a caricature artist at Dorney Park in Allentown, Penn.

“Our main stand was literally right across the midway from the Tilt-A-Whirl,” Schwartzman said. “We would just watch it all day long, and so we'd hear people screaming, we'd hear people laughing, people would come off the ride and every now and then we'd witness people puking,” she added, laughing.

She pointed to the Tilt-A-Whirl’s unique design that plays with centrifugal and gravitational forces. Each ride is different, too, as the weight of the passengers can increase or decrease the spinning motion.

“It's that feeling when it's starting to spin and the centrifugal force kicks in,” Schwartzman said. “It's just that pure joyous feeling that you get in your stomach when it's spinning and you can't really control it.”

Keri Huber, the State Fair archivist, says the first generations of Tilt-A-Whirl rides at the fair used to be located in the Mighty Midway. Somewhere along the way, as larger rides like the Air Maxx and the Kraken took over the Midway, the fair relocated the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Kidway.

One reason: As long as a child is accompanied by an adult, they only have to be 3 feet tall to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl (most of the rides at the Midway require a height of at least 4-feet).

Huber says the State Fair archives don’t hold a lot of information about the ride, but she posits that may be because it was such an instant classic, history took it for granted.

“It's a wonderful ride that can be celebrated through the generations,” Huber said. “Your grandparents went on that ride, and then your parents and then now you as a child.”

The Minnesota State Fair runs Aug. 27 through Sept. 7.

For nearly 150 years, Pillsbury United Communities has worked across Minneapolis to provide everything from youth programs and employment services to food assistance and a world class theater.

Its work is rooted in a simple idea: The people who live in the neighborhood are the ones who know how to make their lives there better.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with the new president and CEO of Pillsbury United Communities about taking the helm at a time when local communities are facing so many challenges, and how the arts and connection can help people heal.

Guests:

• Signe Harriday is the new president and CEO of Pillsbury United Communities, one of the Twin Cities’ oldest and largest nonprofits. The organization runs several community centers in Minneapolis and programs aimed at uplifting communities. She previously acted, directed and taught with Pillsbury House + Theatre before becoming the organization’s artistic producing director in 2021.

• Antonio Cardona is director of advancement at Pillsbury United Communities. He was previously the vice president of career readiness at Project for Pride in Living. Before that, he worked at Pillsbury for 15 years, primarily overseeing workforce development and charter schools.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

Do you love the science-focused, curiosity-driven storytelling on Radiolab? Pallas Erdrich, manager of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, recommends reading Radiolab co-host Lulu Miller's memoir “Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life.”

Its exploration of how and why animals are classified the way they are will make you more curious about the world, Erdrich says.

“It’s more than just a science book. It is a book about love. It is a book about discovering yourself. It is a book about not holding on to the rules that were made up around us and trying to figure out where we fit in the world.” she said.

“And it’s funny. It’s bright. It’s short. There are illustrations that are very beautiful that kind of give you a peek into her mind. It’s just, for me, a nearly perfect book. I have no notes for Miss Miller!”

Miller also voices the audiobook. Radiolab airs Saturdays at 2 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. on MPR News.

Birchbark Books celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are coming home to Minnesota for a special concert at the Minnesota State Fair. The Minnesota music legends are the award-winning songwriting and production duo behind dozens of hits for some of the biggest names in music and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with the longtime friends and creative partners about their Minnesota roots, the story behind their successful careers and the friendship that has kept them working together for more than 50 years.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis

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Guests:

• Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are a Grammy Award-winning songwriting and production duo from Minnesota who have created hits for artists including Janet Jackson, Prince, Mariah Carey and Usher. They have been friends and creative partners for more than 50 years.

Do you know a Power Pair?

“Power Pairs” is a series featuring prominent Minnesotans in a close relationship. You may know of them separately but they reveal a new side of themselves when they sit down together. Listen to past interviews here and submit your idea for a future Power Pair here.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.  

Every fall, thousands of bird lovers stand far above Lake Superior, on Duluth’s Hawk Ridge, and watch as thousands of raptors soar overhead on their way south.

But for all of their abundance, even majestic osprey, hawks, eagles and falcons are affected by the steep declines in bird populations across the western hemisphere.

In his gorgeous new book, naturalist and conservationist Robert Macfarlane asks, “What is lost when birds are lost? Above all, the creatures themselves, in their own splendor and right. And for humans — language, story, beauty, possibility, imagination, lifts of the spirit, ways of being otherwise. Birds are our place-makers, memory-keepers, calendars and clocks. They stitch the world’s parts together: earth to sky, river to woodland, mountain to sea, country to country, hemisphere to hemisphere.”

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The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss

Go to MPR's Bookshop to purchase this title and support local indie bookstores.

Macfarlane’s new book, “The Book of Birds,” finds him collaborating once again with artist Jackie Morris for a beautifully illustrated ode to birds. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Macfarlane joins Kerri Miller to talk about the birds he loves — even though he says he’s not really a birder — and lament the disappearance of so many birds from our planet. His hope is that “The Book of Birds” will reignite a sense of wonder because “we will not save what we do not love.”

Guest:

• Robert Macfarlane is an award-winning writer, who has authored many books about nature and our interconnectedness. His new book, “The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss” was co-created with artist Jackie Morris.

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

A new interactive exhibit in Minneapolis is reimagining predictive text as a tool for creative connection.

“Counter-Algorithmic Poetics,” created by poet and AI engineer Dana Chiueh, invites visitors to respond to writing prompts at computer stations. As they type, related phrases appear on their screens. But unlike conventional predictive text, those suggestions are not generated by artificial intelligence. They were written by other visitors.

Chiueh designed an algorithm that identifies related fragments and gives participants the option to incorporate their neighbors’ words into their own writing. The contributions will ultimately be assembled into a communal poem and projected on the exhibit wall.

“It’s sort of this communal, collaborative experiment in writing,” Chiueh said. “The final piece will be composed of all of these fragments that people have contributed.”

Chiueh said the project responds to the sense of powerlessness many people feel as technology becomes more embedded in everyday life. She wants to demonstrate that digital tools can be small-scale, handmade and designed around community values rather than profit.

“I've noticed a lot of people around me feel really disempowered by the technology that's encroaching on everyday life, like from our phones to doing meetings on Zoom,” said Chiueh. “And people just feel powerless to contribute to it. But as an engineer, I've been wanting to show people that technology is something that can be small and handmade and made like for us by us.”

“Counter-Algorithmic Poetics” opens Saturday at 6 p.m. at Resource in Minneapolis and runs for three days. Chiueh hopes the project can eventually help other communities create poetry together.

A bike art archive finds a new home, the Walker Art Center opens a new show inspired by the Mississippi River, a Broadway rave, a Northwoods art fest and more in this week’s MN Shortlist.

ARTCRANK Archive at Venture Bikes Midtown in Minneapolis — Aug. 7

For almost 20 years, the ARTCRANK group has been celebrating art that celebrates cycling. Part of the mission is to “make art as accessible as bikes.” Amen. And now the ARTCRANK Archive (including more than 200 original, limited edition, bike-themed screenprints) has a new home at Venture Bikes Midtown.

To celebrate, Venture Bikes is hosting a group ride at the Midtown Greenway at 6 p.m. Friday with riders from Melanin in Motion, followed by music and a large-scale outdoor projection featuring works from the archive at the shop. (Alex V. Cipolle)

Minnesota Fringe Festival in Minneapolis — Through Aug. 16

Minnesota Fringe, one of the largest experimental performing arts festivals in the Midwest, returns to Minneapolis for its 33rd year. Fringe always features homegrown stories inspired by our particular geography, culture and politics, and this year is no different. First up is “Who We Are: Stories from the Surge,” a piece of documentary theater about the Minnesotans who “experienced, confronted, and did their best to get themselves and their neighbors through Operation Metro Surge.”

The show’s book is sourced from dozens of interviews, public statements and sworn testimony that captured ICE raids in Minnesota earlier this year.

In a similar if not more fantastical vein is “Minnesota is the Shire, or Fair & Back Again,” where creator Seán McArdle puts a Tolkienian lens on many of the challenges and tragedies the state has faced in recent history: ICE, the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the assassination of Melissa Hortman and, as McArdle puts it, just generally living through the Scouring.

For lighter Minnesota fare, there is an improvised production of “Love is Blind” and a Lake Mille Lacs reimagining of “Jaws” called “MUSKIE.” There are other local takes, too, such as “An Earth Goddess (Preah Mae Thorani)” by Narate Keys, a Khmer playwright from Cambodia. The musical explores Khmer culture during the 12th-century Angkorian reign of King Jayavarman. As Keys points out in an artist statement, Minnesota is home to one of the largest Southeast Asian diasporas in the U.S.

“We are honored to share a story to enrich our underserved community including the Hmong, Khmer, Lao and Viet diaspora communities on reclaiming language through theatre, collective storytelling, working with arts makers and with our actors, singer, producer amongst many others to bring this musical into fruition,” Keys said. See more MPR News Fringe coverage in Art Hounds. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘The Butler Did It’ at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul — Through Aug. 16

If I had to pick one Minnesota playwright best known across the country, it would be August Wilson. If I had to pick a second, it would be Jeffrey Hatcher. His adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens are sharp, witty and often quite funny — as are his original works like the musical “Glensheen.” His output is also quite consistent: In 2024, he debuted “Groucho Marx Meets T.S. Eliot,” and next year his version of “A Tale of Two Cities” will premiere at the Guthrie Theater.

This theater season, however, Hatcher has crafted an original thriller, “The Butler Did It,” now running at Park Square Theatre, which they are describing as “in the grand tradition of ‘Dial M for Murder’ and ‘Columbo.’” (Clever marketing, given that Hatcher adapted “Dial M” for the stage in 2022 and wrote an episode of “Columbo” back in the day.)

Hatcher is a true gem in the Twin Cities theater scene, so whenever he has a new play out, it feels like Santa put a gift in your stocking. (Jacob Aloi)

‘Olalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies’ at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — Through Jan. 3

The Walker Art Center presents the first solo museum exhibition of Olalekan Jeyifous, a Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist trained in architecture. Jeyifous is known for using specific places and spaces to springboard into alternate worlds — be that whimsical or dystopic — that explore racism, climate change, capitalism, community and more.

With the Walker exhibition, Jeyifous finds inspiration in the Mississippi River as well as the 1991 magical realism novel “The Famished Road” by Nigerian author Ben Okri, which opens with the lines: “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry.”

Thus, the exhibition begins with a “riverine enclave” and island platforms rising from sediment and debris. The objects on view — carved sculpture, soundscapes, videos — are the fruits, remnants and detritus of the river and its peoples. Jeyifous calls it “a melding of African diasporic cosmologies with Indigenous water knowledge”

“Rivers have long served as lifelines for ecological and cultural balance, but colonization and industrialization disrupted these reciprocal relationships, imposing systems of control and exploitation with lasting effects,” Jeyifous said in an artist statement. (Alex V. Cipolle)

Northwoods Art & Book Festival in Hackensack — Aug. 8

The Northwoods Art Council presents the 31st annual festival, which brings together artists, authors and neighbors to celebrate storytelling. The fest features more than two dozen authors and more than four dozen artists on Lake Street in Hackensack.

Interestingly, the Northwoods inspires many a murdery mystery and thriller, including those by Marjorie Mathison (“Murder at Pelican Lake”), Brenda Lyne (“Ripple Effect”) and Chris Norbury (“Castle Danger”), who will be there for meet-and-greets. Artworks on view include the delightfully peculiar art brooms of Mark Smith and Crazy Leaf Photography (look for their photo of squirrels eating cheese puffs). (Alex V. Cipolle)

Red River Valley Renaissance Faire — Aug. 8-16

While thy patience must be tempered until the end of August to revel in the Minnesota Renaissance Festival’s return, another opportunity to enjoy ye olden times has presented itself just beyond the border of the fair land of Minnesota. The Red River Valley Renaissance Faire in Fargo boasts entertainment from bards and magicians, merchants hawking their wares and jousting that tests the true mettle of the participating knights.

Costumes are encouraged, but not required — Let’s be honest, though, who doesn’t want to dust off their musketeer outfit? The Ren Faire runs weekends through Aug. 16. (Jacob Aloi)

Broadway Rave at Fine Line in Minneapolis — Aug. 8

Minneapolis is a dancer’s paradise. Aside from the usual dance floors at clubs like the Gay 90s and the Saloon, the city is also home to great “rave events” — top of mind for me is “Shrek Rave” which is exactly what it sounds like. A perennial favorite for the theatrically minded, however, is “Broadway Rave” at Fine Line in Minneapolis.

The concept is simple: a major dance party featuring hits from major musicals, new and old. It’s the perfect venue for recovering theater kids, Lin-Manuel Miranda fans and those who insist on singing “Wicked” songs on karaoke nights. (Jacob Aloi)

This week, Art Hounds is devoted to the Minnesota Fringe Festival. More than 100 individual plays will run on stages across Minneapolis Thursday through August. Fringe is the largest non-juried theater festival in the U.S.; amateur and professional theater makers alike pitch shows that are chosen by lottery. Each show must be fewer than 60 minutes, and there are up to seven slots a day for shows to run.

For many, it's the wild diversity of shows itself that is the draw. Performances this year span from musicals to improv, dance to clowning, one-person shows to full casts. Most performers are local, but there are visiting performers who travel to Minnesota to take part. Each show runs five times throughout the 12-day period.

Interested in going? There are ticketing options for single shows as well as a range of multi-show options. Check out the shows and ticketing options on the Minnesota Fringe website. For those attending with families, each show page includes recommended minimum ages and content warnings.

And while it's hard to select just one or even a few shows to highlight, we asked Art Hounds to do just that.

Tech: What could go wrong?

Actor Taj Ruler recommends the improv comedy show, Tech. Set on the night before an opening Fringe show, anything can and will go wrong in this ensemble led by Mike Fotus at Strike Theater.

"I'm excited because I think it is a stellar cast of improvisers, the best in the Twin Cities. So I think you're in for a good time, and it'll be different every time for the five shows that they have."

Watership Down: An authorized musical based on the classic novel

Actor and writer Isabella Dunsieth is looking forward to seeing "Watership Down." The musical is based on the 1972 novel by Richard Adams; Rachel Ropella and Timothy Kelly worked with Adams' estate as they adapted it for the stage. Bee Davis of Minneapolis wrote the music and lyrics. The novel tells the story of a band of rabbits on a perilous journey to find a new home. This show by Melancholics Anonymous runs at the Rarig Stoll Thrust Theatre.

"I can't wait to see what they do with this. 'Watership Down' with Melancholics Anonymous is a little something different for that company. Typically, they're doing silly tongue-in-cheek coming-of-age type stories. Last year at Fringe, they did Joan of Arc for Miss Teen USA, which was, you know, very funny, but also really grounded in community and girlhood and caring for others. It was very beautiful. I feel like Watership Down is maybe a little darker for melancholics, and so I'm very interested to see how they make that tonal shift."

And three more ...

Sarra Beckham-Chasnoff and her wife treat the Fringe as a staycation, taking time off work to see a show in every time slot over the next 12 days. Pressed to name a few shows she particularly wanted to see, she cited "Watership Down" and "Tech," as well as these:

Bay Creek by the Miller Company, written and performed by Derek Lee Miller, at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance

"I've seen this show performed at another fringe festival and at the Twin Cities Horror Festival, and in my mind, I forget that he's the only person on stage. It's creepy and well-acted, written beautifully, and has some surprises in it."

A Confluence of Magical Arseholes by the Winding Sheet Outfit, at Rarig Stoll Thrust Theatre.

"Winding Sheet Outfit have always done beautiful productions that really highlight why coming to a theater is so much different than going to a movie or listening to music. They often have music in their performances. Their presentations are beautiful, and I always come away feeling moved and learning something new. It appears that this one may be more comedic, and I'm really excited to see how they weave comedy into their shows."

Leave Room for Jesus by Hannah Wydeven, at Barbara Barker Center for Dance

"It's an improvised comedy musical where Hannah Wydeven takes on the role of a pastor who believes that she is very charismatic and does a revival. Her hang-ups become very clear early in the show, and she, of course, uses some information that she gets from the audience. It's just a wild romp."

Country music is in the air in Detroit Lakes this week. One of the nation’s largest country music festivals starts Wednesday at Soo Pass Ranch just outside town. Big names like Lainey Wilson and Brooks & Dunn will take WE Fest’s three stages to play for tens of thousands of fans.

The lineup includes a couple local artists, like Zach Thomas, who’s from the western Minnesota town of Wendell and now lives in Fargo. He joined MPR News guest host Kelly Gordon to talk about his upcoming gig, why he writes sad songs and what it’s like to witness the explosion of pop country’s popularity as an independent artist.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Target Field concession workers have announced a one-day strike set for Wednesday at the sold-out Noah Kahan concert.

The labor action follows a similar one in June when the Twins played the Los Angeles Dodgers. According to UNITE HERE Local 17, many fans were still waiting to get into Target Field in the third inning due to the strike.

Delaware North, the company that manages concession stands at Target Field, said the venue will be fully staffed for the Noah Kahan show.

Union Secretary-Treasurer Sheigh Freeberg doesn't believe the company's claims.

"Last time they said the exact same thing,” Freeberg said. “They said it will be exactly the same. It will be totally, fully staffed, but that's not the truth.”

He added that stands were not open or were not set up. “Fans had a terrible experience waiting for an extremely long time," he said.

Freeberg called it “bravado” from the company.

The union and the concessions vendor have been in negotiations since March.

Delaware North said in a statement they offered non-tipped, part-time workers a $20 an hour wage and a health care plan, comparable with other venues in town.

“The union is in agreement that the employers finally made movement on the first year's wages. They have agreed to move a good number of people to $20 an hour,” Freeberg said. He added that it is about 300 members.

Both sides also don’t agree on who is considered non-tipped.

“Along with that, in the second year and the third year of the contract, they're only proposing 75-cent wage increases, which is pretty minimal given how much everything costs and how high inflation is,” he said.

Freeberg also said the health care proposal would only apply to about 10 out of the union's 500 concession and hospitality workers.

With weeks before the 2026 Minnesota State Fair starts, one Grandstand concert is already sold out.

No tickets are available for the TLC and Salt-N-Pepa concert with En Vogue. The Sept. 5 show is part of their “IT’S ICONIC” national tour.

The headliners are among the most influential female groups in modern history. TLC defined R&B and pop music in the 1990s with songs like “No Scrubs” and “Waterfalls.” Formed in 1985, Salt-N-Pepa helped pave the way for women in rap and is known for hits like “Shoop” and “Push It.”

However, people seeking tickets can have some hope. There may not be a need to “creep” on the concert from outside the Grandstand or worry “What about your friends?” who failed to snag seats earlier.

“Ticket availability can fluctuate closer to the concert. Sometimes, more tickets become available that were being held for production or something like that,” said Maria Hayden, the Minnesota State Fair marketing and social media supervisor.

Hayden advises people to continue to check the State Fair website for tickets or visit the box office on the day of the show.

Tickets are limited for the “Weird Al” Yankovic concert with Puddles Pity Party on Aug. 28, according to Hayden.

Single seats or obstructed view seating may remain. In the latter instance, people can call the Grandstand to learn how views are limited and purchase tickets.

Shows are scheduled each night at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand spanning gospel, country, blues, rock and pop genres, in addition to the fair’s Amateur Talent Contest finals.

Another legendary R&B group, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, will perform on Aug. 29.

A once-iconic shopping center in Roseville serves as the backdrop for a new short story collection exploring migration, identity and belonging.

“Har Mar,” released in July, is the debut collection from author Hilal Isler. The interconnected stories follow women whose lives span Turkey and Minnesota as they navigate family, grief, love and the challenges of building a life between cultures.

From a nanny hoping to leave her life in Istanbul behind to a bookseller coping with loss through an unlikely relationship, each character searches for connection while confronting uncertainty.

MPR News host Kelly Gordon spoke with Isler about the inspiration behind “Har Mar,” why she chose the Roseville shopping center as the book's title and setting, and what she hopes readers take away from the collection.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.