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Lee Blessing is best known for the Tony Award-winning “A Walk in the Woods” and, recently, “Thief River” at the Guthrie Lab. He calls his Two Rooms “a play about devotion.” Written circa 1988, the story centers on a woman whose husband has been taken hostage in Beirut. Flanked by reporters and government officials, this … Read more

Piggybacking on the success of “Carmen,” Jeune Lune serves up a second spicy, Spanish-flavored opera—one that also stars the now-famous Baldwin sisters (who played the title role and Micaela in “Carmen”) as desirous but unattainable divas. This time, Dominique Serrand and company have chosen a little-known piece, perhaps a preemptive move to disable opera traditionalists … Read more

Ah, the magic of globalization. Thailand, once known for its tiger-filled jungles and ancient, deeply spiritual culture, has become the promised land for trust-fund hippies wearing Patagonia underpants and business travelers cruising for underage prostitutes. In this gripping collection of short stories, twenty-five-year-old Thai-American writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap spys on the tourists and eavesdrops on the … Read more

Receiving snail mail from loved ones is always exciting, simply because it’s such a rare form of intimacy. That sense of closeness is bound to bleed over onto the stage with the Literary Friendships series. The first two writers paired up for an onstage conversation are Robert Bly (pictured here) and Donald Hall, friends and … Read more

What is home? To M.J. Andersen it’s a warm cup of tea, a blazing fire, and a quilt sewn by hand, all nestled together in Plainville, a South Dakota township. In “Portable Prairie: Confessions of an Unsettled Midwesterner,” quiet landscapes slow the fast-paced writer, now settled out East, in a large Victorian with her husband. … Read more

The fortunes have smiled widely upon Evelina Chao. Gifted with both music and poetry, this violist for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has written a memoir, “Yeh Yeh’s House,” that carries readers to China, where her ancestors endured the cruelties of the Cultural Revolution and also enjoyed a land of beauty. In 1987 Chao traveled … Read more

In her essays, memoir, and novels, Gordon is not one to shy away from either the deeply philosophical or the overtly feminist. Her latest novel revolves around Pearl Meyers, a twenty-year-old American student in Dublin, who has chained her emaciated body to a flagpole, protesting the violence in a land where religion and politics are … Read more

If Happy Apple’s brand of loud, fast, and bursting music—a little electronica, a little Coltrane, a little Cobain—hasn’t single-handedly restored Minnesotans’ interest in new jazz, it has, at the very least, attracted a new crop of listeners to the form. This trio of composers and multi-instrumentalists, who moonlight with rock bands and countless other side … Read more

Masters of the slow buildup, these downbeat Duluthians seem to have finally reached a point of catharsis on their seventh album. Compared with their previous shades-of-gray works, “The Great Destroyer” is kaleidoscopic in range, showing off the trio’s considerable songwriting chops and blowing a big hole in its reputation for sonic somnolence. (Read more in … Read more

We’re as tempted as anyone to hole up at home during January, but thereÕ’ no better excuse than this festival to break free from a self-imposed house arrest. Some of Hawaii’s most accomplished musicians are descending upon the Twin Cities at the very moment that planeloads of Minnesotans are zooming away in search of sunshine … Read more