The Archive Project

In this episode of The Archive Project , we’re reaching back more than 30 years into the archive to feature the prolific novelist Jane Smiley from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in 1991. This period was an inflection point in her career. At that time, she had established herself as an important and respected American writer, but had yet to find a large audience—to this day, many believe The...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature journalist Patrick Radden Keefe from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in February 2023. Keefe is the author of five books of nonfiction, most recently Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Rebels, and Crooks , a collection of essays from his work as a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. NPR called Rogues “a wonderful book, not only because K...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Lauren Groff from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in early 2023 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Groff is the author of six books of fiction, the last three of which, Fates and Furies , Florida , and Matrix were all national bestsellers and all finalists for the National Book Award. One of the many delights in reading Groff’s books is t...

This week on The Archive Project , we bring you a lecture from the 2003/2004 season of Portland Arts & Lectures, featuring renowned memoirist and short story writer Tobias Wolff. Best known for his memoirs This Boy’s Life  and  In Pharaoh’s Army , Wolff has also published award-winning fiction, mostly short stories, and in this lecture is discussing his 2003 novel,  Old School , which was a fi...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature a discussion on late writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy of pacifism and environmentalism. Our moderator is Theo Downes-Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor. Theo is in conversation with Oregon-based writers Juhea Kim, author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land , a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Michelle Ruiz Keil, a...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we reach back to the year 2000 to highlight one of the best conversations about writing found in our archives: A special event with Amy Bloom and Michael Cunningham. Amy Bloom had just published a collection of stories entitled, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You , and Cunningham had published one his most important and bestselling novels, The Hours, j...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature a conversation from Pickathon 2022. Literary Arts partnered with the Pickathon music festival to program on-stage author readings, and for a live recording of The Archive Project at the Lucky Barn stage. At The Archive Project live, Oregon poet laureate Anis Mojgani led a wide-ranging conversation with Portland-based multidisciplinary writers and...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Scottish novelist Douglas Stuart, winner of the Booker Prize for his debut novel, Shuggie Bain . He speaks about his new novel, Young Mungo , with Portland-based author and Oregon Book Award winner Omar El Akkad. They discuss the desire and longing at the heart of the story of the love between two working class young men from different religious...

On this episode of The Archive Project , we feature multi-genre bestselling poet and author of thirty-eight books, Kwame Alexander, who discusses his memoir Why Fathers Cry at Night with James Beard award-winning chef of Portland’s Kann, and author of the cookbook Everybody’s Table , Gregory Gourdet. Their conversation was recorded at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland. Alexander is best-known fo...

In this episode, we feature a conversation between Louise Erdrich and Portland-based writer Trevino Brings Plenty from the 2021 Portland Book Festival. Louise Erdrich joined us virtually from Minneapolis for an event in front of a live audience at the Newmark Theater. She is on our most celebrated and writers alive. Her novels include The Night Watchman , which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, The Rou...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Abdulzarak Gurnah from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in September 2022.  He joined us as part of the American launch of his most recent novel Afterlives . He had just won the Nobel prize for literature, after a long and distinguished career as a novelist in Britain, thought he was relatively unknown here in the United States. In his talk,...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature a Portland Book Festival event with two prominent young adult novelists whose work appeals to readers of any age. Ellen Hagan’s novel in verse, Don’t Call Me a Hurricane , explores the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on a New Jersey shore community through the perspective of Eliza, who is fighting to protect her home from development while navigatin...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature a talk by Amor Towles from a Literary Arts special event on February 1, 2023. Towles is the author of three novels including the huge, international bestseller, A Gentleman in Moscow . He joined us to talk about his latest work The Lincoln Highway , also a bestselling novel, which began for Towles a full twenty years before its publication with a...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature a talk from Edwidge Danticat from Portland Arts & Lectures on May 12, 2022. Danticat became nationally recognized with her debut novel published in 1994 Breath, Eyes, Memory which was an Oprah Book Club selection and national bestseller. Since then, she has gone on to publish more than a dozen books in multiple genres—novels, short fiction, m...

On this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a conversation between Kiese Laymon and Imbolo Mbue on storytelling, environmental racism, and activism, recorded at the 2023 AWP Conference in Seattle, Washington. Set in a fictional African village being polluted by an oil company, Imbolo Mbue’s latest novel, How Beautiful We Were , confronts environmental devastation, corporate colonialis...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Ada Limón from the closing night of the 2022-23 Portland Arts & Lectures series. Limón is the author of six books of poetry and a finalist for numerous prizes for her work. In 2022, Limon published a collection of new poems The Hurting Kind and was also named the 24 th Poet Laureate of the United States, at the age of 46. Of this recognition...

On this episode of The Archive Project , we have a conversation recorded exclusively for our show. We are featuring Portland Youth Philharmonic, the nation’s oldest youth orchestra, and we’ve brought together a conductor, a composer, a poet, and a vocalist to discuss their cross-disciplinary collaboration on a poetry-inspired piece titled Because I Will Not Despair . The piece is based on the poet...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Charles Simic from a Poetry Downtown event in 2007. Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1938, and some of his earliest memories are of German bombs falling on the city. Later the Russian army would arrive. In 1954, Simic was brought to the United States by his family and, at the age fifteen, he began to learn English. It’s remarkabl...

Don’t miss the 2023 Verselandia! competition at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Thursday, April 27 at 7:00 p.m. More information & tickets at literary-arts.org . In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature some of the incredible slam poets who performed as part of Verselandia!—the annual, city-wide youth poetry slam championship event, presented by Literary Arts—in 2022. Eac...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we are celebrating the kickoff of National Poetry Month with a special event, recorded in front of a live audience at Literary Arts event space in downtown Portland on September 17, 2022. This event was part of a partnership with the Alano Club of Portland and their Artists in Recovery series, about the intersections of mental health and substance use recov...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we’re reaching back more than 30 years into the archive to feature the prolific novelist Jane Smiley from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in 1991. This period was an inflection point in her career. At that time, she had established herself as an important and respected American writer, but had yet to find a large audience—to this day, many believe The...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature journalist Patrick Radden Keefe from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in February 2023. Keefe is the author of five books of nonfiction, most recently Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Rebels, and Crooks , a collection of essays from his work as a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. NPR called Rogues “a wonderful book, not only because K...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we share a conversation from the 2022 Portland Book Festival. Actress Selma Blair discusses her debut memoir, Mean Baby , with Esmé Weijun Wang, author of the novel The Border of Paradise and the best-selling essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias . March is National Disability Awareness Month. Much of Selma’s memoir describes her life with a litany...

The 2023 Everybody Reads title is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Join us at the Keller Auditorium on Thursday, March 16 for an evening with Ruth Ozeki. More info and tickets here . In this episode of The Archive Project , we bring you a talk from Mira Jacob, which was the culminating event of the 2022 Everybody Read’s program. Every year, the Multnomah County Library chooses one book the...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature one of the highlights of the 2022 Portland Book Festival. It’s a conversation between two of our most accomplished fiction writers, George Saunders and Jess Walter. Their conversation is by turns hilarious, caustic, tender, and profound.  Our interviewer for the event was OPB’s own Geoff Norcross, who does his usual masterful job moderating. Find...