AS A LONGTIME BOOKSELLER, DESIGNER, AND LOVER OF ALL KINDS OF PRINT, I always swore I’d never own an e-reader (not counting a couple of times I wavered while hauling yet another box of books in yet another move). But times and technology, storage space and reading habits change, and just before embarking on a few months of frequent business travel, I finally succumbed to the allure of electronic…

LAKE SUPERIOR, ONE OF THE LARGEST LAKES IN THE WORLD, DOMINATES thousands of miles in not one, but two countries, creates its own climate, and nurtures and kills daily. But today, in the age of lakefront condos, virtual landscapes, and tweets about Republican presidential candidates, the Great Lake’s power is easily overlooked.  I confess: I myself tend to the lake for granted. But Duluth author…

ABOUT THE PODCAST: You Are Hear is a literary podcast production of mnartists.org. Each monthly edition will feature new, original work by a Minnesota writer or two. The show is available on our site, of course, but also mnartists.org’s Audioboo page (for ease of sharing and downloading). Stories, poems, humor pieces, spoken word performances and whatever else talented folks can do with nouns and…

WHAT, DO YOU SUPPOSE, IS THE SINGLE MOST BELOVED PIECE of artwork in the city of Minneapolis? “Belovedness” is pretty subjective (in addition to not being an actual word), so the metrics for determining this sort of thing are admittedly a little shaky. But there are a number of ways to consider the question: What piece of art, were it to disappear or be otherwise deaccessioned tomorrow, would provoke…

“EVERYONE KNOWS THE SENSITIVE TOPICS,” says Twin Cities-based Chinese artist Meng Tang. Taiwan, Falun Gong, Tibet, the Uighurs - all are strictly off limits to artists in China. But as artist (and international cause celebré) Ai Weiwei discovered this spring, those who challenge the Chinese government on other issues can just as easily find themselves in the government’s crosshairs. After the “Arab…

IF YOU STAY IN BALLET CLASS LONG ENOUGH, EVERYTHING HAPPENS. I just found out a girl from class killed herself. Or let herself die — she was found in her car in New York City, cold. Back in Minneapolis briefly after an injury, she’d just returned to the big city with a new desperation to make something happen. I knew her: a pretty flaxen blonde with a corn princess smile, long torso, wide flat…

IS JAZZ AN IDIOM, a process, a result, a lifestyle? Is it a marketing term or a philosophy? And who cares? Substitute “art” for “jazz” and the subject broadens, but you’re still left with an essential ennui at the heart of the question. Does anyone really believe anymore? I didn’t go to school for any of this, so I didn’t get that special brand of dogmatism that can come from academic entitlement. It’s…

In this month’s episode of the You Are Hear literary podcast, writer Jill Grunewald shares a story about love and remodeling—and the occasionally serendipitous disaster.

Lightsey Darst describes the experience of BodyCartography Project’s Super Nature, an installation/work-in-progress at the Walker, which explores the nuance of interpersonal relation, attempting to “choreograph empathy.”