The joke is that there's something in the lake water, or that the long winters are responsible. But Wednesday night, when two Minneapolis authors won 50 percent of the prestigious National Book Awards, the rest of the country became aware of something that people here already knew: This is one heck of a book town.
The awards that went to novelist Louise Erdrich for "The Round House" and to William Alexander for his debut young-adult novel, "Goblin Secrets," are just the latest in an unprecedented series of honors for Minnesota writers and publishers.
"This award is for stories that are grounded here, about us," Erdrich said after returning from New York on Thursday. "It belongs to the Native community, to North Dakotans and Minnesotans." Erdrich, whose novel is set on a North Dakota Indian reservation, gave her acceptance speech in both English and Ojibwe. She won against stiff competition, including best-selling author Dave Eggers and Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Díaz.
"People elsewhere think that it's cold and desolate around these parts, but that cold is good for literacy and reading and culture," she said. "We live in a very special place, and I'm glad to call it home."
Minnesota has a long literary tradition, dating to Robert Bly's little magazine The Fifties, Sinclair Lewis' Nobel Prize and everything F. Scott Fitzgerald ever did. But recent years have seen a steady rise in the state's literary profile.
Poet Matt Rasmussen -- born in International Falls, now living in Robbinsdale -- won the prestigious Walt Whitman Award; poet Jim Moore won a Guggenheim Fellowship; authors published by Graywolf Press won a Pulitzer, a Nobel Prize and a National Book Critics Circle award, and an author published by Coffee House Press was a Pulitzer finalist.
And that was just this year.
"It's acknowledged nationally that we have one of the best literary cultures in the country," said Jocelyn Hale, executive director of the Loft, the nation's largest literary center.
