At the National Magazine Awards Thursday night, Glamour won Magazine of the Year. New York Magazine won the most awards, with four. National Geographic and The New Yorker won three each.
St. Paul resident, public-radio star, novelist and columnist Garrison Keillor won an NMA for his essay about State Fairs in the July issue of National Geographic magazine, which included his list of the "10 Chief Joys of the State Fair."
Here's a Midwest-specific excerpt from Keillor's essay:
The Midwest is State Fair Central, and it thrives here because we are the breadbasket of America, Hog Butcher, Machinemaker, Stacker of Particleboard, Player With Chain Saws, Land of the Big Haunches. And also because Midwesterners are insular, industrious, abstemious, introspective people skittish about body contact, and a state fair is liberation from all of that, a plunge into the pool of self-indulgence, starting with a thick pork chop hot off the grill and served on a stick with a band of crisp brown fat along one side. The fat is not good for you. You eat the pork chop, fat and all, and your child eats her pork chop, and then you score a giant vanilla shake from the Dairy Bar to cushion the fall of a bagful of tiny doughnuts. Now you're warmed up and ready to move on to the corn dog course.
