Bruce Henricksen's "The Zero Club" made me think about how literary writers are received in my own region. Duluth MN has some authors to be proud of. Connie Wanek and Barton Sutter are poets with national reputations, and the essays in Sutter's Cold Comfort are wonderful meditations on life in this area. Henricksen's Ticket to a Lonely Town has been a finalist for national awards; it is moving and lyrical, and the story about a delusional blackmailer in Minneapolis is hilarious social satire.
But these writers don't get much more attention in this area than they would in Florida. The Duluth News Tribune publishes no locally written reviews, and the notices of literary events require a magnifying glass. The major newspapers in the Twin Cities do pay reviewers, but our state's literary writers have to line up behind writers of detective novels, cookbooks, and fishermen's memoirs.
It must be frustrating.
|
|
|
More by victoria day |
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 4
Do you think the Internet provides a new space to bring attention to writers, or is the loss of local press coverage too great to a regional community?
_________________
Julia Schrenkler
Minnesota Public Radio Interactive Producer
I'm a potter and, like writers, am frustrated by marketing difficulties, so I'm getting a web site. I'll have to learn computer and photography skills to post new work, but am anticipating results!
Cheers
I have a friend who runs an Internet Review site; maybe if you talked to her about setting up a regional section of the site, she'd let you review Minnesota writers of all varieties?
Gather.com, in particular, steered me toward Beryl Singleton Bissell's wonderful book, the scent of God, Andy Revkin's The North Pole Was Here, and now - Bruce Henricksen! Thanks.