The Archive Project

This episode features a panel discussion from the 2017 Portland Book Festival wherein 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 mo...

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...

Ursula Le Guin begins her discussion with Margaret Atwood in 2010 by saying, “I emailed Margaret about six weeks or so ago and said, ‘What are we going to talk about?’ and she replied, ‘I expect we will talk about 1) What is fiction?; 2) What is science fiction?; 3) The ones who walk away from Omelas—where do they go?; 4) Is the human race doomed?; 5) Anything else that strikes our fancy.’” The tw...

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...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Ann Patchett retraces the steps that lead to her 2013 essay collection, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage . With a seemingly endless wellspring of wit and charm, Patchett takes us a series of adventures that ultimately lead to her first and only collection of essays. From refilling ketchup bottles to writing pieces for Seventeen and Vogue to opening up...

In this episode, Jeffery Eugenides and Danzy Senna discuss their most recent works. Fresh Complaint , Eugenides’s first collection of short stories, centers on people in the midst of crises—both personal and political. In Senna’s New People we meet a self-identified “mulatto” couple as they navigate the messy realms of love, race, and identity. Both works fearlessly approach the realm of the taboo...

In this episode of the Archive Project , author Daniel Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket) is interviewed by the New Yorker ’s Gilbert Cruz at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival. As the enigmatic author of children’s, young adult, and adult fiction, Handler offers a unique perspective on literature, life, and the creative impulse. In this interview, he reflects on the moments that drew him to...

This Liars’ League event is filled with flash fiction stories on the theme “Willpower & Shame,” and features stories by writers Jean Rover, Laurie Sandra Davis, Todd Davidson, Rebecca Haas, Elizabeth Danek, Beth Fernandez, Amreen Ukani, Marc Cozza, Anna S. King, Omie Wallace, Betsy Porter, and Raymond Mitchell; performed by actors Aundré Barnes, Kim Bogus, James Dixon, Megan Katherine, Ka...

In this episode of The Archive Project, the legendary Margaret Atwood reads from two pieces of her short fiction. These works, which she reads publicly for the first time in Portland’s First Congregational Church, blend humor, empathy, and deep sentiment in ways that only Atwood can. With all her characteristic wit and humor, Atwood brings her work to life, finding levity in even the most difficul...

In this episode, George Saunders discusses the process that lead to his award-winning first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo , which contemplates the time Abraham Lincoln spent in his son’s tomb following his death and the fate of the young boy’s soul. With all the characteristic wit and humor of his short stories, Saunders takes the audience through the process of writing the novel—from the first spar...

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...

This episode of the Archive Project features writer and thinker Reza Aslan as he takes the listener on a historical journey to find the roots and reasons for faith. In this lecture, Aslan reflects on the nature of faith, highlighting the human tendency to depict higher powers in our own image. Aslan uses evidence from several archaeological sites—some from as far back as 14,000 B.C.—to illustrate...

This episode of The Archive Project features journalist and New York Times bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with the New York Times’ Jenna Wortham at the 2017 Portland Book Festival. Hailed by Toni Morrison as the intellectual heir to James Baldwin, Coates has become one of the most sought after voices on the subject of race in America. In this interview, he discusses the Black...

This episode of The Archive Project features filmmaker and writer Francis Ford Coppola discussing his new book, Live Cinema and Its Techniques , with New York Times ’ Melena Ryzik. In this eye-opening interview, Coppola discusses his thoughts on live cinema, a technique in which movies are performed live and broadcast via satellite into theaters. Throughout the conversation, Coppola looks back on...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Colson Whitehead and Yaa Gyasi discuss the intersection of race and fiction. In his novel, The Underground Railroad , Whitehead explores a world in which the infamous Underground Railroad is not a euphemism, but a reality—a subterranean railroad system connecting alternate versions of America in each state along its route. In Homegoing , Gyasi tells the sto...

This episode features authors Jonathan Lethem, Helen Phillips, and Dana Spiotta as they discuss the presence of the fantastic or strange in their work. In The Gambler’s Anatomy , Jonathan Lethem tells the story of Bruno Alexander, an international backgammon hustler who believes he’s psychic. Helen Phillips’s short story collection, Some Possible Solutions , takes us through a series what-ifs and...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Richard Russo, Karen Russell, and Kevin Young discuss inequality and its influence on their work. In Everybody’s Fool , Richard Russo revisits the town of North Bath, NY and its colorful citizens a decade after the events of Nobody’s Fool . Karen Russell takes us to the edge of reality with Swamplandia! , the story of an alligator wrestling family, the Bigt...

This episode of The Archive Project features celebrated novelist and screenwriter, Alice Hoffman in conversation with the Director of the Multnomah County Library Vailey Oehlke at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival. Hoffman joined us at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival in 2016 to discuss her then newly published novel, Faithful . This New York Times bestseller follows Shelby Richmond, a young...

In this episode of The Archive Project we dive into the world of Young Adult fantasy with authors P.C. Cast, Renée Ahdieh, and Kendare Blake. P.C. Cast’s Moon Chosen tells the story of Mari, an Earth Walker, as she seeks her destiny in a world where humans, their animal allies, and the earth itself have been drastically changed. In Renée Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn , a re-telling of “A Thousan...

This episode of The Archive Project features musician, writer, and actress Carrie Brownstein discussing her memoir, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl , with writer and filmmaker Jon Raymond during 2016’s Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival. In this candid and casual conversation Brownstein discusses her time in the iconic rock band Sleater-Kinney, her acting and directing in the hit comedy Portlandia...

For the next season of The Archive Project, Literary Arts is thrilled to partner with Cole Haan, the fashion brand that’s acknowledging extraordinary people who write, read, and shape the world through their stories. The stories you’ll hear this season highlight, among many themes, the pivotal moments in these writers’ careers, and the friendships and partnerships that make authorship happen. Here...

In Another Day, best-selling author David Levithan tells the story from the side of Every Day’s Rhiannon as she seeks to discover the truth about love and how it can change you. Girl at the Bottom of the Sea , Michelle Tea’s sequel to Mermaid in Chelsea Creek, finds our hero Sophie traveling from Massachusetts to Poland with her unlikely guardian, the mermaid Syrena. And in Beastly Bones...

In this lecture, recorded shortly following the 25 th anniversary of the publication of his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses , Salman Rushdie shares personal stories and his insights from his time spent in hiding. The consequences Rushdie faced following The Satanic Verses , largely from the fatwā  calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, are broug...

This episode of The Archive Project features best-selling authors, and long-time pen pals, Elizabeth Gilbert and Ann Patchett. Their devoted and supportive friendship sparkles throughout their conversation as they weave comfortably through topics at the forefront of their lives as high-profile female authors. Taking an honest and open approach, they discuss the challenge of balancing the demands o...

In this episode of The Archive Project, author Mohsin Hamid discusses his childhood transitions from Pakistan to the United States and back again, citing Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons as two of his earliest storytelling influences. He goes on to highlight moments on his journey as a writer, including how Moth Smoke, his debut book, began as his Harvard Law thesis; how he convinced a supervi...