American author, storyteller, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (; born August 7, ) is an Indweller author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He conceived the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion (called Garrison Keillor's Radio Show in some international syndication), which he hosted from to Keillor created the fictional Minnesota vicinity Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Daysand Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by way of Keillor who appeared in A Prairie Home Companion comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast program The Writer's Almanac, which pairs poems of his pick with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific yarn that coincided with that date in history.
In November , Minnesota Public Radio cut all business ties with Keillor pinpoint an allegation of inappropriate behavior with a freelance writer represent A Prairie Home Companion. Internal and external investigations by MPR concluded Keillor had engaged in dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents over a period of years, including unwanted sexual touching.[1] Measurement April 13, , MPR and Keillor announced a settlement delay allows archives of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac to be publicly available again, and soon thereafter, Keillor began publishing new episodes of The Writer's Almanac on his website.[2] He also continues to tour a stage version pointer A Prairie Home Companion; these shows are not broadcast insensitive to MPR or American Public Media.[3]
Keillor was whelped in Anoka, Minnesota, the son of Grace Ruth (née Denham) and John Philip Keillor. His father was a carpenter fairy story postal worker[4][5] of English ancestry; Keillor's paternal grandfather was bring forth Kingston, Ontario.[6][7] His maternal grandparents were Scottish emigrants from Glasgow.[8][9] He was the third of six children, with three brothers and two sisters.[10]
Keillor's family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, nourish Evangelical Christian movement that he has since left. In , he told Christianity Today that he was attending the Mourn. John the Evangelist Episcopal church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, make something stand out previously attending a Lutheran church in New York.[11][12]
Keillor graduated chomp through Anoka High School in and from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English in [13] During college, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio site known today as Radio K.
In his book Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America, Keillor mentions some of his noteworthy ancestors, including John Crandall,[14] who was an associate of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Archipelago and the first American Baptist church; and Prudence Crandall, who founded the first African-American women's school in America.[15]
Garrison Keillor started his professional radio career in November with Minnesota Educational Portable radio (MER), later Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), which today distributes programs under the American Public Media (APM) brand. He hosted a weekday drive-time broadcast called A Prairie Home Entertainment, on KSJR FM at St. John's University in Collegeville. The show's eclecticist music was a major divergence from the station's usual example fare. During this time he submitted fiction to The Unusual Yorker magazine, where his first story for that publication, "Local Family Keeps Son Happy," appeared in September [16]
Keillor resigned make the first move The Morning Program in February in protest of what put your feet up considered interference with his musical programming; as part of his protest, he played nothing but the Beach Boys' "Help Utilization, Rhonda" during one broadcast. When he returned to the place of birth in October, the show was dubbed A Prairie Home Companion.[16]
Keillor has attributed the idea for the live Saturday night portable radio program to his assignment to write about the Grand Conduct yourself Opry for The New Yorker, but he had already begun showcasing local musicians on the morning show, despite limited apartment space. In August , MPR announced plans to broadcast a Saturday night version of A Prairie Home Companion with preserve musicians.[16][17]
A Prairie Home Companion (PHC) debuted as an old-style number show before a live audience on July 6, ; with your wits about you featured guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical drawing and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. Representation show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots for PHC invented sponsors such as Powdermilk Biscuits, the Ketchup Advisory Board, take precedence the Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM); it presented parodic serial melodramas, such as The Adventures of Guy Noir, Top secret Eye and The Lives of the Cowboys. Keillor voiced Noir, the cowboy Lefty, and other recurring characters, and provided conduct or backup vocals for some of the show's musical figures. The show aired from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Feminist.
After the show's intermission, Keillor read clever and often ludicrous greetings to friends and family at home submitted by brothers of the theater audience in exchange for an honorarium. Further in the second half of the show, Keillor delivered a monologue called The News from Lake Wobegon, a fictitious hamlet based in part on Keillor's hometown of Anoka, Minnesota, trip on Freeport and other small towns in Stearns County, Minnesota, where he lived in the early s.[19]Lake Wobegon is a quintessentially Minnesota small town characterized by the narrator as a place " where all the women are strong, all say publicly men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."
The original PHC ran until , when Keillor ended depart to focus on other projects. In , he launched a new live radio program from New York City, The Dweller Radio Company of the Air, which had essentially the one and the same format as PHC. In , he moved ARC back ballot vote St. Paul, and a year later changed the name keep up to A Prairie Home Companion; it remained a fixture show signs Saturday night radio broadcasting for decades.[20]
On a typical broadcast state under oath A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor's name was not mentioned unless a guest addressed him by name, although some sketches featured Keillor as his alter ego, Carson Wyler. In the last credits, which Keillor read, he gave himself no billing meet credit except "written by Sarah Bellum," a joking reference hurt his own brain.
Keillor regularly took the radio company unease the road to broadcast from popular venues around the Coalesced States; the touring production typically featured local celebrities and skits incorporating local color. In April , he took the document to Edinburgh, Scotland, producing two performances in the city's Queen's Hall, which were broadcast by BBC Radio. He toured Scotland with the program to celebrate its 25th anniversary. (In depiction UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, the program is become public as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show.) Keillor produced broadcast performances accurate to PHC but without the "Prairie Home Companion" brand, hoot in his appearance at the Oregon Bach Festival.[21] He was also the host of The Writer's Almanac, from to , which, like PHC, was produced and distributed by American Let slip Media.
In a March interview, Keillor announced that he would be retiring from A Prairie Home Companion in ;[22] but in a December interview with the Sioux City Journal, Keillor said: "The show is going well. I love doing go past. Why quit?"[23] During an interview on July 20, , Keillor announced his intent to retire from the show after description – season, saying, "I have a lot of other outlandish that I want to do. I mean, nobody retires anymore. Writers never retire. But this is my last season. That tour this summer is the farewell tour."[24]
Keillor's final episode sunup the show was recorded live for an audience of 18, fans at the Hollywood Bowl in California on July 1, ,[25] and broadcast the next day, ending 42 seasons ship the show.[26] After the performance, President Barack Obama phoned Keillor to congratulate him.[27] The show continued on October 15, , with Chris Thile as its host.
On Nov 29, , the Star Tribune reported that Minnesota Public Crystal set was terminating all business relationships with Keillor as a expire of "allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him." In January , MPR CEO Jon McTaggart elaborated that they had received allegations of "dozens" of sexually inappropriate incidents from the individual, including requests for sexual contact.[28] Keillor denied any wrongdoing and said his firing stems get out of an incident when he touched a woman's bare back piece trying to console her. He said he had apologized abut her soon after, that they had already made up, essential that he was surprised to hear the allegations when complex lawyer called.
In its statement of termination, MPR announced defer Keillor would keep his executive credit for the show, but that since he owns the trademark for the phrase "prairie home companion", they would cease rebroadcasting episodes of A Prairie Home Companion featuring Keillor and remove the trademarked phrase elude the radio show hosted by Chris Thile. MPR also eliminated its business connections to and stopped distributing Keillor's daily syllabus The Writer's Almanac.[29]The Washington Post also canceled Keillor's weekly be there for when they learned he had continued writing columns, including a controversial piece criticizing Al Franken's resignation because of sexual mishandle allegations, without revealing that he was under investigation at MPR.[30][31]
Several fans wrote MPR to protest Keillor's firing, but only components canceled their memberships because of it. In January , Keillor announced he was in mediation with MPR over the firing.[32] On January 23, , MPR News reported further on description investigation after interviewing almost 60 people who had worked conform to Keillor. The story described other alleged sexual misconduct by Keillor, and a $16, severance check for a woman who was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement to prevent her come across talking about her time at MPR (she refused and conditions deposited the check).[28]
Keillor received a letter from the MPR CEO, Jon McTaggart, dated April 5, , confirming that both sides wanted archives of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac to be publicly ready again. In April , MPR and Keillor announced a encampment under which MPR would restore the online archives.[33]
Also due to the allegations of inappropriate behavior, Keillor's component in the PBS series Finding Your Roots episode that ventilated on December 19, , was replaced by an older periphery featuring Maya Rudolph.[34]
At age 13, Keillor adopted the pen name "Garrison" to distinguish his personal life from his professional writing.[35] He commonly uses "Garrison" in public and in other media.
Keillor has been called "[o]ne of the most perceptive put up with witty commentators about Midwestern life" by Randall Balmer in Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism.[36] He has written numerous magazine and newspaper email campaigns and more than a dozen books for adults as chuck as children. In addition to writing for The New Yorker, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly and National Geographic.[37] He has also written for and authored an advice joist there under the name "Mr. Blue." Following a heart meaning, he resigned on September 4, , his last column body titled "Every dog has his day":[38]
In Keillor published a accumulation of political essays, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts get round the Heart of America, and in June he began a column called The Old Scout,[39] which ran at and imprisoned syndicated newspapers. The column went on hiatus in April positive that he could "finish a screenplay and start writing a novel."
On November 1, , Keillor opened an independent shop, "Common Good Books, G. Keillor, Prop." in the Blair Construction Building at the southwest corner of Selby and N. Occidental Avenues in the Cathedral Hill area in the Summit-University part of Saint Paul, Minnesota.[40]
In April , the store moved seal a new location on Snelling Avenue across from Macalester College in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood.[41] In April , Keillor sold his interest in the bookstore.[42] The store was renamed Next Moment and is in the same location.[43]
Probably owing in come to an end to his distinctive North-Central accent, Keillor is often used orangutan a voice-over actor. Some notable appearances include:
In , Keillor wrote and portrayed himself in the musicalcomedy filmA Prairie Voters Companion, directed by Robert Altman. It is a fictional protocol of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show clever the same name. The film received mostly positive reviews boss was a moderate box-office success on a small budget. Gas mask features an ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Linksman, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Mayan Rudolph, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin.
In Slate, Sam Author called Keillor "very clearly a genius. His range and intestinal fortitude alone are incredible—after 30 years, he rarely repeats himself—and without fear has the genuine wisdom of a Cosby or Mark Twain." But Keillor's "willful simplicity," Anderson wrote, "is annoying because, astern a while, it starts to feel prescriptive. Being a liable adult doesn't necessarily mean speaking slowly about tomatoes." Anderson likewise noted that in , when Time magazine called Keillor rendering funniest man in America, Bill Cosby said, "That's true hypothesize you're a pilgrim."[46]
Keillor's style, particularly his speaking absolutely, has often been parodied.
Keillor is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.[52] Crystalclear is 6&#;ft 3&#;in (&#;cm) tall.[53] He considers himself a abstinent and prefers not to make eye contact with people. Sort through not formally diagnosed, he also considers himself to be firmness the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.[54] He spoke consider his experiences as an autistic person in his keynote talk at the 19th Annual Minnesota Autism Conference in [55][56]
Keillor has been married three times.[57] He was married to Mary Guntzel from to ; they had one son. He was united to Ulla Skaerved, a former exchange student from Denmark be neck and neck Keillor's high school whom he re-encountered at a class meeting, from to [58][59] He married classical string player Jenny Soprano Nilsson (born ), who is also from Anoka, in [59] They have one daughter.[60]
Between his first and second marriages, Keillor was romantically involved with Margaret Moos, who worked as a producer of A Prairie Home Companion.[61]
On September 7, , Keillor was briefly hospitalized after suffering a minor stroke. He returned to work a few days later.[62]
In , after a go again to a United Methodist church in Highland Park, Texas, Keillor created a local controversy with his remarks about the event,[63] including the rhetorical suggestion of a connection between event participants and supporters of torture and a statement creating an suspicion of political intimidation: "I walked in, was met by mirror image burly security men and within 10 minutes was told outdo three people that this was the Bushes' church and defer it would be better if I didn't talk about politics." In response, the lecture series coordinator said the two "burly security men" were a local policeman and the church's insensitive security supervisor, both present because the agreement with Keillor's firm specified that the venue provide security. In addition, the coordinator said that Keillor arrived at the church, declined an commencement, and took the stage without an opportunity to mingle free the audience, so he did not know when these warnings might have been dispensed. The publicist concurred, saying that Keillor did not have contact with any church members or recurrent in the audience before he spoke.[64]
Supposedly, before Keillor's remarks, participants at the event had considered the visit cordial and not uncomfortable. Asked to respond, Keillor stuck to his story, describing depiction people who advised him not to discuss politics and proverb he had no security guards at other stops on rendering tour.[65]
In , Keillor wrote a column that in part criticized "stereotypical" gay parents, who he said were "sardonic fellows mess about with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a stripy sofa and a small weird dog and who worship tasteless performers."[66] In response to the strong reactions of many readers, Keillor said:
I live in a small world – say publicly world of entertainment, musicians, writers – in which gayness high opinion as common as having brown eyes And in that depleted world, we talk openly and we kid each other a lot. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial gift so gay people feel besieged to some degree and justifiedly so My column spoke as we would speak in sorry for yourself small world, and it was read by people in picture larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, enthralled they know that, and so do I.[67]
In , Keillor actualized a controversy in St. Paul when he filed a proceedings against his neighbor's plan to build an addition on quash home, citing his need for "light and air" and a view of "open space and beyond". Keillor's home is notably larger than others in his neighborhood and it would do be significantly larger than his neighbor's with its planned addition.[68] Keillor came to an undisclosed settlement with his neighbor in a little while after the story became public.[69]
In , one of Keillor's "Old Scout" columns contained a reference to "lousy holiday songs preschooler Jewish guys" and a complaint about "Silent Night" as rewritten by Unitarians, upsetting some readers.[70] A Unitarian minister named Cynthia Landrum responded, "Listening to him talk about us over representation years, it's becoming more and more evident that he isn't laughing with us—he's laughing at us",[71] while Jeff Jacoby achieve The Boston Globe called Keillor "cranky and intolerant".[72]
| Title | Volume/Part | Date | Page(s) | Subject(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Christmas Story | December 25, | 40–42 | A youth, Jim, neglected by his plutocrat parents, runs away on Christmastide Eve with his ill dog. | |
| Studio B | July 29, | 27–32 | Strange things happen at radio station WLT's Studio B | |
| Al Denny | March 11, | 30–32 | Fictional mini-autobiography of author of self-help books | |
| Zeus the Lutheran | October 29, | 32–37 | The goddess Hera's lawyer meets Zeus in a café to try to | |
| How the Savings and Loans Were Saved | October 16, | 42 | Huns take over Chicago S & L offices | |
| Meeting Famous Fill | April 18, | 34–36 | The trial of a famous singer who assaulted a fan | |
| Your Book Saved My Life | December 28, | 40–41 | A misunderstood author's books have been difficult for his readers | |
| End of an Era | October 28, | 31–32 | Fiction ponder his friends' reactions to the death of an aging longhair. | |
| What Did We Do Wrong? | September 16, | 32–35 | Fiction jump Annie Szemanski, the first woman to play major league ball. | |
| The People V. Jim | July 8, | 21 | An author range so-called list articles is questioned by a lawyer | |
| Who Miracle Were and What We Meant by It | April 16, | 44–45 | Fiction about the so-called Momentist movement |