Featured Speaker Series
Garrison Keillor Returns to Kent State Tuscarawas
Best-selling author and host of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor is returning to Kent State University at Tuscarawas for a performance on April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center. The lobby doors open at 6:30 p.m. The campus is located at 330 University Dr. NE, in New Philadelphia.
Sponsored by the Voices of Distinction Series, the performance is free and open to the public, however tickets are required and will be available beginning April 10 at the Performing Arts Center Box Office, which is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are limited to four per person and must be picked up in person. They will not be available online. Free parking is available for all shows.
This will be Keillor's second performance at Kent State Tuscarawas. He first performed at the campus in April 2006 to a full house in the Founders Hall auditorium.
The show, Garrison Keillor - A Brand-New Retrospective, is about a 70-year old man who relives the good times and the music that brings it all back: hymns, jingles, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, pop tunes, limericks, rock 'n roll, Beethoven, love sonnets, rags, blues and rousers. Performing with Keillor will be singer Christine DiGiallonardo, and pianists Richard Dworsky and Rob Fisher.
One of America's most beloved radio hosts and acclaimed humorists, Keillor was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minn., 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 in St. Paul. Today, some four million listeners on more than 600 public radio stations coast to coast and beyond tune in to the show each week.
Keillor has been honored with Grammy, ACE and George Foster Peabody awards, the National Humanities Medal, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
His many books include Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance, and Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny (Viking). He is the host of the daily program The Writer's Almanac and the editor of several anthologies of poetry, most recently, Good Poems: American Places (Viking). In 2006, Keillor played himself in the movie adaptation of his show, a film directed by Robert Altman. In 2007, he opened an independent bookstore, Common Good Books, in St. Paul, Minn., where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Previous Speakers in our Voices of Distinction Series
Michael Moriarty March 14, 1996
Pat Choate
Bob Woodward
Marlin Fitzwater
Joe Theismann
Catherine Crier
Mike McCurry
Jack Kemp
Peter Leyden
Greg Gumbel
Ralph Nader
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Peter Bergen
Andrea Mitchell
Lynne Russell
Frank Deford
Terry Bowden
James Earl Jones
Dave Barry
Bob Huggins
Kathleen Parker
Garrison Keillor April 12, 2006
Neal Boortz October 12, 2006
David Baldacci November 7, 2006
Ken Burns April 9, 2007
Clark Kellogg October 10, 2008
Rick Pitino November 5, 2007
Capitol Steps March 6, 2008
Todd Crandell April 8, 2008
Rick Reilly November 20, 2008
George Stephanopoulos March 17, 2009
Kimberly Dozier October 13, 2009
Charlie Spoonhour March 8, 2010
Bob Peterson March 17, 2010
Cal Ripken November 3, 2010
Andre Thornton April 5, 2011
David Eisenhower October 12, 2011
Dave Barry April 10, 2012