… Feb. 15 event is free and open to the public
Garrison Keillor
Music, literature, and homegrown charm will be celebrated when the host of Minnesota Public Radio’s live radio variety show “A Prairie Home Companion” visits the University of Mississippi.
Author, humorist and radio personality Garrison Keillor is slated to be the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College spring convocation speaker 7:30 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts.
The lecture is free and open to the public; however, tickets are required. Tickets, which are limited to two per person, will be available starting at noon Friday (Feb. 3) at the UM Box Office in the Student Union. Box Office hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
“Garrison Keillor brings the best of the spoken arts to our students,” said Doug Sullivan-González, UM honors college dean. “A renowned storyteller, he captures the mood and music of his age and brings the fundamental questions alive through his wit and humor. Keillor will draw on his treasure trove of real and imagined narratives as he pushes us to examine our limits and possibilities.”
In the 30-plus years on the air, including broadcasts from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Iceland and almost every one of the 50 states, the show has included plenty of adventure including wonderful performers, standing ovations and stares of bewilderment.
Some 4 million listeners hear “A Prairie Home Companion” each week on more than 600 public radio stations, and abroad on America One and the Armed Forces Networks in Europe and the Far East.
“When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it’s a good way of life,” Keillor said.
The humorist has written numerous magazine and newspaper articles and more than a dozen books for adults and children. In addition to writing for The New Yorker, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly and Salon.com.
“When Garrison Keillor comes to Oxford, he will find Mississippi’s answer to Lake Wobegon, ‘the little town that time forgot,'” said Merrill Lee Girardeau, a junior in the honors college. “Here we still take pleasure in browsing through a bookstore, still greet strangers on the street and still know how to cook with bacon fat. I can imagine Mr. Keillor taking a stroll around Square Books or sharing a drink with a group of local writers.”
Girardeau, an English major from Birmingham, Ala., said that Oxford residents, like Keillor, value simple pleasures.
“In fact, what I love about Oxford is what I have always loved about ‘A Prairie Home Companion,'” she said. “I hope that Keillor’s address will attune students’ ears to the simple pleasures around them. I also hope that his visit will create a few more public radio fiends like me.”
Keillor has received a Medal for Spoken Language from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and received a National Humanities Medal and a Grammy Award. His latest books are “A Christmas Blizzard,” (Viking Adult, 2009) and “Good Poems, American Places,” (Viking Adult, 2011).
Accompanying Keillor for his visit are Richard Dworsky and Heather Masse. For the last 17 years, Dworsky has been the pianist-music director for “A Prairie Home Companion,” where he provides original theatrical underscoring and leads The Guys All-Star Shoe Band.
Masse is a New York singer-songwriter who grew up in rural Maine and began singing at an early age. Trained at the New England Conservatory of Music as a jazz singer, she is steeped in the jazz tradition, which informs her distinct approach to singing folk, pop and bluegrass. She performs both as a solo performer and as a member of folk supergroup The Wailin’ Jennys.
For more information or for assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-7294.