The Archive Project

Maxine Hong Kingston appears as part of the Portland Arts and Lectures series not long after many of her belongings and writings were lost in the Oakland firestorm of 1991. Her lecture, entitled “Another Person of Peace,” is about her rediscovering herself as a person and a writer following the fire. Kingston discusses the inspiration behind her book that was lost to the flames, which was to mirro...

Wideman and McMillan begin their lecture with a discussion of the projects they are working on and how they decide what material to write next. McMillan then reads an excerpt of her writing, speaking through the voice of one of her female characters. Wideman follows by reading a segment called “Picking Up My Father From the Springfield Station.” Each writer talks about his or her inspiration: in W...

Portland poet and essayist Doug Marx moderates this lecture between former Poet Laureate Robert Hass and Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. Hass and Milosz read and discuss a variety of their poems. Marx periodically asks questions about each poet’s inspiration and their composition process, and Hass and Milosz’s answers often lead to the reading of additional excerpts. “When I said ‘pleasur...

Wright begins his lecture by elaborating on his recent journalistic investigation into the history of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard. Wright seeks to answer two overarching questions: 1) Where do new religious ideas come from? and 2) why would anybody believe them? Although he focuses on Scientology, Wright also emphasizes the fundamental needs that drive people to all organized religions: hope, p...

Barthelme begins his lecture with a series of readings, including a story about his family’s quest for a dog, his reflections on being a father, the study of angels, and a conversation with Goethe in which he compares music, art, and nationalities to common day objects. Barthelme also previews a selection of excerpts from his forthcoming novel The King , a retelling of Le Morte D’Arthur thro...

Oliver Sacks begins his lecture by sharing a series of anecdotes about his patients, such as one man who could not recognize faces or objects and mistook his wife for a hat—the inspiration for the title of one of his books. Additional stories include a man with a head injury who lost his sense of smell and a woman who had no left-sided sensory perception. He discusses the relationship between neur...

  Former Executive Director of Literary Arts Julie Mancini gives a speech about the early days of Literary Arts during our 30th birthday celebration on September 8, 2014. She shares memories from her fifteen-year career, including the ways in which she helped convince world-famous writers such as Joan Didion to visit Portland. Sharing feedback from visiting authors, Mancini chronicles how Por...

Mark Doty reads from his new book, Deep Lane, and discusses his poetic influences, including Walt Whitman and Deborah Digges. These mentors, and the themes and ideas from their works, appear throughout Doty’s poems. Other themes include animals and observations on the natural world. Doty also shares several poems about New York and concludes his reading with a generous Q&A session with the aud...

Mitchell S. Jackson begins with a round of thanks, sometimes unconventional, to all those who influenced his journey to stand before thousands of people in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, as a successful author. He mentions that after he was incarcerated as a young man, he began the process of revision, and he goes on to discuss the differences between editing and revision. “Editing is fixing th...

Kazuo Ishiguro begins the interview by talking about growing up in a Japanese family in England and watching the British with “amused distance,” stating, “I was taught to respect British customs, but they were just that: values and customs that the natives adhered to.” His family finally decided that they would not return to Japan when he was 15, but he says that he first began writing novels with...

Joyce Carol Oates takes the audience on a dreamlike, philosophical journey as she discusses the origins of art and stories. She poses several hypothetical questions, touching on the purpose of human existence and the reasoning behind our desire to create art. Oates explores these questions by tracing the evolution of the writer: the writer as a child, the writer in school, and so on. She is fascin...

Carlos Fuentes gives a talk titled “After the Cold War: The Rise of a New Agenda.” It is the keynote address for a conference intended to help Oregonians put into a global perspective the cultural, economic, and political significance of the emerging Hispanic population of Oregon and the United States. Fuentes discusses the changes taking place in the world since the end of World War II, mainly fo...

Isabel Allende begins her lecture with stories about writing her new book, Island Beneath the Sea, focusing specifically on the connections between the histories of Haiti and New Orleans. The inspiration for the book came after Allende visited New Orleans and was intrigued by the Haitian refugees who created their own identities in Louisiana. She tells how her research into the plantations and the...

John Dunne begins his lecture by discussing how two people can experience the exact same thing and come away with completely different observations—specifically how writers betray the image the subjects hold of themselves. He gives anecdotes about a shared experience with Richard Rhodes and quotes Henry James, saying, “If a writer talks about writing without quoting from Henry James . . . then you...

Ruth Ozeki discusses her novel A Tale for the Time Being, specifically the phrase “time being” and its several meanings. Ozeki tells the story of discovering her main character, Nao, and her journey toward figuring out all the various narrative elements of her novel. It was a long, circuitous route: world affairs, books, and life experiences all influenced the characters and events Ozeki wrote abo...

Gore Vidal is interviewed by Lauren Kessler, answering several questions about his political writings and the power of writers in America, specifically Mark Twain and Noam Chomsky. Vidal says he strongly dislikes systems, especially the press, whom he calls “part of the corporate ownership of the country.” He goes on to discuss his work, including a comparison of his novel, The Smithsonian Institu...

Award-winning poet Terrance Hayes begins by reading from his most recent collection, Lighthead , opening with “Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy.” He is relaxed and conversational about his writing, pausing between poems to discuss why he chose to write about specific ideas and to define words that, he says, “only people east of the Mississippi would understand.” (For example: muscadine .) Many of t...

Jane Hirshfield reads poems from her new collection at the time, After , which was named a ‘best book of 2006’ by The Washington Post . The poem she begins with— “Theology”—immediately establishes Hirshfield as a writer in tune to the frequencies of the natural world, observing life and death, animals and humans, through a stunning montage. Between poems, Hirshfield shares the meaning of her colle...

During his lecture, award-winning poet Li-Young Lee reads seven of his poems: “Station,” “The Children’s Hour,” “Have You Prayed?,” “Self-help for Fellow Refugees,” “Immigrant Blues,” “Trading for Heaven,” and “Virtues of the Boring Husband.” He introduces each poem with anecdotal information, including his philosophies about romantic love and its connection to finding God. In the Q&A afterwar...

In one of the earliest recordings of Portland Arts & Lectures, Oregon writer Barry Lopez begins his lecture with stories about his travels in the Arctic, where he struggled with the language barrier but discovered a word that spoke volumes to him: isumatug , which translates roughly to “storyteller” or “the person who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself.” Throughout his talk,...

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Stephen Sondheim. Considered “one of the greatest songwriters in the history of musical theater,” Sondheim died at the age of 91 on November 26, 2021. Sondhiem’s storied career includes mentorship by another icon of musical theater from a previous generation, Oscar Hammerstein. The first show for which Sondhiem would write the music and lyrics was Sa...

Robert Stone begins by comparing morality and art, describing the former as “a neo-Gothic structure: immense, ornate, and sterile” and the latter as “like a black panther…radical, the appealing cousin of crime. Never a dull moment with art.” He discusses the relationship between truth and beauty, and emphasizes the importance of fiction. “Storytelling is not a luxury to humanity,” he says, “it’s a...

With his signature dry humor, Bill Bryson discusses incidents throughout his life that later became part of his nonfiction books. He begins with the story of hiking and his fear of bears, saying that one should “always go hiking with someone who can’t run as fast as you can.” He says that Oregonians have a well-developed, sophisticated sense of humor and notes the similarities to the dry humor in...

Ursula K. Le Guin opens with the question, “Where do you get your ideas from?” and replies with her favorite response, from Harlan Ellison: “He says he gets his ideas from a mail-order house in Schenectady.” Le Guin goes on to seriously address the question, because “unanswerable questions are just what fiction writers like to answer.” She discusses the process of all artists’ work, of the connect...

Kopple opens by talking about being grateful that documentaries are moving into the mainstream, with audiences appreciating these “real-life, nonfiction films.” She then tells about her journey to becoming a filmmaker, which started while she was studying political science in college and, instead of writing a paper, decided to make a short film showcasing people who’d had lobotomies. “My professor...