The Archive Project

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single micro-interview at Portland Book Festival 2018, in partnership with  The Believer  magazine. The first featurette puts The Believer ’s Sara Ortiz in conversation with Tommy Orange, author of critically acclaimed debut novel  There There , which follows the struggles of Oakland Indians as th...

Ron Chernow opens his talk with a discussion on being a biographer—from the perils of picking a subject to debates about how much one should reveal about that subject. Specifically, he discusses his research on the life of John D. Rockefeller for his book Titan (1998) and how it is not unusual when writing a biography to encounter “somebody I had not met in any of the earlier biographies. Here was...

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single event during Lit Crawl Portland 2018. Lit Crawl is an eclectic mix of literary events staged in nontraditional locations. From poetry readings in bars to literary trivia and karaoke in hotel lobbies, Lit Crawl seeks to unite readers and writers in a single night jam-packed with literary fun...

In this episode of The Archive Project , American Book Award winning poet Martín Espada discusses his then most poetry collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen . In this, his sixth collection, Espada has created a poetic mural. There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the “Mayan astronomer” calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement...

In this humorous and personal lecture, Tayari Jones discusses her complex journey to literary success, and her novel, An American Marriage . She describes the path her career has taken, from childhood to university and beyond, in which she’s made decisions to pursue writing despite receiving varying levels of support from educators, family, and the publishing industry. She finishes the talk by sha...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Mary Oliver reads poems from several of her collections, focusing on brief images of the natural world that she believes people need to attend. These poems include “Messenger,” “Thirst,” “Percy 1,” “The Swan,” “Beans,” “Swimming with Otter,” “Wild Geese,” “Percy 2,” “There you were and it was like spring,” and “The Sun.” Between poems, Oliver shares details...

This episode of The Archive Project features bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist Barbara Kingsolver discussing her then most recent novel Flight Behavior . The novel is a heady exploration of climate change, along with media exploitation and political opportunism that lie at the root of what may be our most urgent modern dilemma. Set in Appalachia, a region to which Kingsolver has returned of...

In this rare, vintage recording from the Literary Arts archive, world-renowned author, poet, and essayist John Updike reads from various poems as well as an essay at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in the fall of 1988. Updike reads from his essay, “Getting the Words Out,” which meditates on his lifelong struggle with stuttering, as well as the nature of speech and communication. With sparkling,...

Women who find themselves confined to wild places, trapped in a cell, by circumstance, by lack of means, by animals and men; and haunted by the past and present alike. The short stories in Lauren Groff’s  Florida  are set in a landscape of physical and environmental dangers, where panthers and snakes lie in wait and hurricanes brew; while personal crises of sex, loneliness, and rage threaten her c...

This episode of The Archive Project features a special discussion between contributors to the new anthology,  New Poets of Native Nations,  with Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Laura Da’, Layli Long Soldier, and editor Heid E. Erdrich.  New Poets of Native Nations  gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry....

When Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions: Why wasn’t she going with friends? Wouldn’t it be incredibly lonely? The North route is better! Was it safe for a woman? The Southern route is the way to go! You should bring mace! And a common one: Why? But Abbi had always found comfort in...

This episode of The Archive Project features great American author Philip Roth reading from his 1991 memoir Patrimony: A True Story . Patrimony is a true story about the relationship between a father and a son. In this masterful and tender memoir, Philip Roth watches as his 86-year-old father, famous for his vigor, his charm, and his skill as a raconteur—lovingly called ‘the Bard of Newark&#...

American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions, the innovations, the memories? A natu...

This humorous and personal conversation between renowned actor Tom Hanks and Parul Sehgal, book critic for the New York Times , was from the Portland Book Festival in 2018.  The Portland Book Festival 2019 line up has just been announced . The Festival will take place on November 9 in downtown Portland. For more information about the author line up, schedule, and tickets visit:&#160...

In this episode, civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson engages the Portland community in a timely conversation on culture, social justice, and politics. Drawing from his own experiences as an organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson explores the issues of the day and discusses the subtle structures and inherent biases that impact our communities. The conversation examines the core themes of...

In this episode, Harvard professor, staff writer at The New Yorker , and  New York Times  bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses her newest work,  These Truths: A History of the United States . Cited as the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and traged...

In this episode, Dawn Lundy Martin, Morgan Parker, and Danez Smith discuss the intersection of race and language, and what it means to render black bodies in literature. Together, these poets explore what it means to be a black artist in America today, and what it means to represent this experience in their work. This panel is moderated by local writer and performer Béalleka. Dawn Lundy Martin is...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Omar El Akkad, Benjamin Percy, and Lidia Yuknavitch discuss their newest works in a conversation titled “Resistance and Rebellion: Dystopian Fiction” at the 2017 Portland Book Festival. El Akkad’s début novel American War imagines an American landscape devastated by its second Civil War and tells the story of the young woman who carries the war-...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Doree Shafrir and Ellen Ullman discuss their work as authors and as women in the booming, male-dominated world of technology. Shafrir’s Startup tells the stories of Mack, Katya, and Sabrina, three very different people whose lives become perilously engulfed in a tech startup scandal. Ullman’s second memoir, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology , t...

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single event during Lit Crawl Portland 2017. Lit Crawl is an eclectic mix of literary events staged in nontraditional locations. From poetry readings in bars to literary trivia and karaoke in hotel lobbies, Lit Crawl seeks to unite readers and writers in a single night jam-packed with literary fun...

In this episode of The Archive Project , bestselling authors Maile Meloy and Claire Messud discuss their new books: psychological mysteries where children go missing and painful truths are revealed in crisis, exploring the spaces between childhood innocence and the hard realities of adulthood. In Maile Meloy’s  Do Not Become Alarmed,  the children go missing while two families are v...

How do we create art from our own wounds and wonders? In their poetry, memoirs, and essays, writers Kaveh Akbar, Melissa Febos, and Megan Stielstra reckon with personal trauma and healing. Tracking the joys and pains of the path through addiction, and wrestling with desire, inheritance and faith,  Calling a Wolf a Wolf  is the darkly sumptuous debut from award-winning poet Kaveh Akb...

How do we create art from our own wounds and wonders? In their poetry, memoirs, and essays, writers Kaveh Akbar, Melissa Febos, and Megan Stielstra reckon with personal trauma and healing. Tracking the joys and pains of the path through addiction, and wrestling with desire, inheritance and faith,  Calling a Wolf a Wolf  is the darkly sumptuous debut from award-winning poet Kaveh Akb...

Pretend boyfriends, arranged marriages, getting photographed by the paparazzi? These YA novelists don’t write your typical love stories In  Sandhya Menon’s   When Dimple Met Rishi , two first-generation Indian-American teens are set up by their parents in an arranged marriage, but the plans backfire when they are paired up at the same coding camp. In  Zan Romanoff’s   Grace and...

This episode features award-winning poet and thinker Claudia Rankine discussing race in America in the years since the publication of her hybrid form volume of poetry Citizen: An American Lyric. In this lecture, Rankine explores not only what it means to be black in America today, but how the black experience relates to what we unconsciously consider the standard, white experience. In a society th...