FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two books, Positively Main Street and Highway 61 Revisited, dig into the singer's storied career and Minnesota roots

Minneapolis, MN

Press Release Date: 2016-10-13T05:00:00+00:00

Legendary songwriter Bob Dylan is now the 2016 winner of the Nobel Literature Prize. In the announcement, Dylan was praised "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"

Dylan grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, and maintains strong ties to the state. The University of Minnesota Press has published two books about Bob Dylan's Minnesota roots:

Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan's Minnesota by Toby Thompson. In the late sixties, Toby Thompson enthusiastically took off for Hibbing, Minnesota, in search of Bob Dylan’s roots. With unprecedented access to Dylan’s English and music teachers, his high school girlfriend Echo Helstrom, and countless neighbors and relatives, Thompson discovers the real person behind the mythology Dylan created. This updated version includes an interview with the author, previously unpublished photographs, and a new preface by Thompson.

Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World, edited by Colleen J. Sheehy and Thomas Swiss. From his roots in Hibbing, to his rise as a cultural icon in New York, to his prominence on the worldwide stage, Colleen J. Sheehy and Thomas Swiss bring together the most eminent Dylan scholars at work today—as well as people from such far-reaching fields as labor history, African American studies, and Japanese studies—to assess Dylan’s career, influences, and his global impact on music and culture. Contributors are: John Barner, U of Georgia; Daphne Brooks, Princeton U; Court Carney, Stephen F. Austin State U; Alessandro Carrera, U of Houston; Michael Cherlin, U of Minnesota; Marilyn J. Chiat; Susan Clayton; Mick Cochrane, Canisius College; Thomas Crow, New York U; Kevin J. H. Dettmar, Pomona College, Carbondale; Sumanth Gopinath, U of Minnesota; Charles Hughes; C. P. Lee, U of Salford, Manchester, England; Alex Lubet, U of Minnesota; Greil Marcus, U of California, Berkeley; Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Pennsylvania State U; Roberto Polito, The New School; Robert Reginio, Frostburg State U; Heather Stur, U of Southern Mississippi; Mikiko Tachi, Chiba U, Japan; Gayle Wald, George Washington U; Anne Waldman, Naropa U; David Yaffe, Syracuse U.