August 21, 2001
Contact: Roman Baratiak
(805) 893-2078
e-mail: baratiak-r@sa.ucsb.edu
“A Prairie Home Companion” host
Garrison Keillor performs at UCSB
Summary Facts:
- Garrison Keillor
- Host and writer of National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion
- “In Search of Lake Wobegon”
- Writer’s reading/performance
- Author of The New York Times bestsellers Wobegon Boy, Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home
- Friday, September 28
- 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- General: $10 / UCSB students: $8
- Tickets may be purchased in advance at the UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office and at the door, if available, beginning at 7 pm
- Charge by phone, 893-3535, or by fax, 893-8637
- For tickets and information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Garrison Keillor, host and writer of the National Public Radio series “A Prairie Home Companion,” will regale the audience with his homespun wit and whimsy on Friday, September 28 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. In Search of Lake Wobegon (Viking, 2001), Keillor’s most recent nonfiction book, is the result of years of “Prairie Home Companion” fans asking him where the mythical town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota really is. Although the town is fictional, he decided to go looking for where it would most likely be. His discoveries are as entertaining as one would expect from the man Time Magazine called “the funniest American writer still open for business.”
Keillor is the author of ten books that have sold over five million copies in the U.S. His most recent novel, Lake Wobegon Summer, 1956 (Viking, 2001), is a coming-of-age tale about a teen whose life is transformed by his precious Underwood typewriter. Keillor has also written The New York Times bestsellers Wobegon Boy, Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home. His work consistently delineates “a line delicate as a cobweb between satire and sentiment” (Cleveland Plain Dealer).
Born and raised in Minnesota, Keillor began his radio variety show “A Prairie Home Companion” in 1974 after writing a piece on the Grand Ole Opry for The New Yorker. The show brings together skits about the mythical town of Lake Wobegon—“where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average”—with ads for quirky imaginary products (The Ketchup Advisory Board) and with musicians (Chet Atkins) often not heard elsewhere on the radio. Keillor and the show took a sabbatical in 1987, but in 1989 he returned to the airwaves with the American Radio Company of the Air, broadcast from New York City. Finally in 1992, Keillor and “A Prairie Home Companion” returned to St. Paul, Minnesota, from where the show still originates. (For more information on “A Prairie Home Companion,” check its web site at phc.mpr.org.)
The Chicago Tribune claims, “Keillor’s great strength as a writer is to make the ordinary extraordinary.” His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Time and The New Yorker. He writes a weekly advice column, Mr. Blue, for salon.com. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Keillor lives in St. Paul with his wife, classical musician Jenny Lind Nilsson.
Keillor claims, “Writing is pure entrepreneurship and a great way of life. And then, if you do a radio show every Saturday, you have a built-in social life. So it’s a pretty good deal.”
Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and KCBX Public Radio. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Garrison Keillor will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Tickets are $10 general admission and $8 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
Roman Baratiak at (805) 893-2078.