About this Artist

GARRISON KEILLOR is the author of 13 books and the host of the weekly radio program A Prairie Home Companion.

Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, and began his radio career as a freshman at the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1966. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. The show, broadcast from St. Paul, Minnesota, and from major venues on national broadcast tours, is now heard each week by more than 3.3 million listeners on more than 535 public radio stations nationwide.

He is the author of 13 books, including Lake Wobegon Days (1985), We Are Still Married: Stories and Letters (1989), WLT, A Radio Romance (1991), The Book of Guys (1993), and Wobegon Boy (1997). His latest novel, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, was published in 2001, as was his photographic essay, In Search of Lake Wobegon. Good Poems, a collection of poetry selected by Keillor and featured on his daily literary radio series, The Writer's Almanac, was released in September 2002. His memoir Homegrown Democrat was published in July 2004.

Keillor received a Grammy Award for his recording of Lake Wobegon Days. He is an inductee into the Radio Hall of Fame at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communica-tions and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

With Philip Brunelle, Keillor has performed with many orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and National symphonies. In May 2002 the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra premiered Mr. and Mrs. Olson, an operatic parody written and narrated by Keillor reworking famous arias such as "Che gelida manina" from La bohème and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot.