Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor did “A Prairie Home Companion” for forty years, wrote fiction and comedy,
invented a town called Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, even
though he himself grew up evangelical in a small separatist flock where all the children
expected the imminent end of the world. He’s busy in retirement, having written a
memoir and a book of limericks and is at work on a musical and a Lake Wobegon
screenplay, and he continues to do “The Writers Almanac” sent out daily to Internet
subscribers (free).

He and his wife Jenny Lind Nilsson live in Minneapolis, not far from the YMCA where he
was sent for swimming lessons at age 12 after his cousin drowned, and he skipped the
lessons and went to the public library instead and to a radio studio to watch a noontime
show with singers and a band. Thus, our course in life is set.

“Fans laughed, applauded and sang along throughout Sunday night’s two-hour show” -
Jeff Baenen, AP News

“His shows can, for a couple of hours, transform an audience of even so-called coastal
elites into a small-town community with an intimacy only radio and its podcast
descendants can achieve” -Chris Barton, LA Times

“[Keillor is] an expert at making you feel at home with his low-key, familiar style.
Comfortable is his specialty.” -Betsie Freeman, Omaha-World Herald