page_title: Garrison Keillor
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Garrison Keillor / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: American humorist and radio personality Garrison Keillor wearing red shoes Norsk bokmål: Den amerikanske humoristen og radiomannen Garrison Keillor
context_page_description: Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He is best known as the creator of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by 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 one or two poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history.
  In November 2017, Minnesota Public Radio cut all business ties with Keillor after an allegation of inappropriate behavior with a freelance writer for A Prairie Home Companion.
context_section_description: Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, the son of Grace Ruth (née Denham) and John Philip Keillor. His father was a carpenter and postal worker who was half-Canadian with English ancestry; Keillor's paternal grandfather was from Kingston, Ontario. His maternal grandparents were Scottish emigrants from Glasgow.
  Keillor's family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, an Evangelical Christian movement that he has since left. In 2006, he told Christianity Today that he was attending the St. John the Evangelist Episcopal church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, after previously attending a Lutheran church in New York.
  Keillor graduated from Anoka High School in 1960 and from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English in 1966. During college, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio station known today as Radio K.
  In his 2004 book Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America, Keillor mentions some of his noteworthy ancestors, including Joseph Crandall, who was an associate of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island and the first American Baptist church; and Prudence Crandall, who founded the first African-American women's school in America.
caption: Keillor in 2010, wearing his signature red shoes
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