The Archive Project

Jill Lepore is a Harvard professor and contributing writer to the New Yorker. Her books include  The Secret History of Wonder Woman ,  New York Burning ,  These Truths: A History of the United States , and her latest,  We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution  – and instant New York Times bestseller.    This year is the semi-quincentennial of the United States of America and, as Lepore po...

If you like Heated Rivalry – if you don’t, you’re the only one, but anyway – if you like Heated Rivalry and want more queer romance but wish it had more wine, we’ve got the books for you. This week’s conversation is features queer romance at the 2025 Portland Book Festival, with authors Jasmine Guillory, Adib Khorram, and moderator Anita Kelly. Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling au...

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...

Stacey Abrams is probably best-known as a politician and political organizer; she the first Black woman in U.S. history to become the gubernatorial nominee of a major political party. Abrams has launched multiple nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies, with a longstanding focus on voter registration and voters’ rights.         What you might not know is that Abrams has published 17 books...

This episode, we bring you Marjane Satrapi. She gave this talk on April 7, 2008, just about one year after the film adaptation of her comic Persepolis had been featured at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature. Sastrapi’s death was announced on June 4, 2026. President Emmanual Macron of France said in the announcement, “Her passing marks the loss...

We’re taking it back to the 2025 Portland Book Festival this weekend, with poets m. mick powell and Taylor Byas, and moderater Jae Nichelle.   Taylor Byas’s second collection, Resting Bitch Face, uses watching and surveillance to explore Black female subjectivity. Byas engages with multiple art forms — painting, film, sculpture, and photographs – to explore the perspectives of artist and mus...

In this episode we feature one of the giants of story telling and of long form journalism, Tracy Kidder. Kidder passed away at the age of 80 in March 2026, and so we are sharing this recording from 2011 as a way for us to celebrate his life and work, and all that he has given to readers. Spanning over 50 years, Kidder’s career began at the Iowa Writers Workshop where he enrolled in 1974 after mili...

The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021. Portland Monuments Project aims to foster publi...

The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021 by fostering public dialogue  to reimagine and t...

In the words of the Los Angeles Times, “A new book by (Patrick Radden) Keefe means drop everything and close the blinds; you’ll be turning pages for hours.” Keefe is an award-winning investigative journalist, a staff writer at the New Yorker, the creator of a popular podcast, and the author of six books, including the bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing . “When I go out looking for...

The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021 by fostering public dialogue  to reimagine and t...

Jill Lepore is a Harvard professor and contributing writer to the New Yorker. Her books include  The Secret History of Wonder Woman ,  New York Burning ,  These Truths: A History of the United States , and her latest,  We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution  – and instant New York Times bestseller.    This year is the semi-quincentennial of the United States of America and, as Lepore po...

Each year, Portland youth spend months writing and competing in poetry slam competitions on high school campuses across the city. Each April, about 20 finalists compete for the title of city-wide Portland slam champ at Verselandia!, in front of an audience of nearly 1,000. The 2026 Verselandia! competition returns to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Thursday, April 30 at 7 pm. For more informa...

April is National Poetry Month, and to kick things off, this year we have a conversation from the 2025 Portland Book Festival between two of our most accomplished contemporary poets: Pádraig Ó Tuama and Patricia Smith. Their conversation is moderated by Portland poet, musician, and Torah teacher, Alicia Jo Rabins. An Oregon Book Award finalist for her collection Fruit Geode , Alicia published her...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong from Portland Arts & Lectures in January 2022. Hong became nationally famous in the spring of 2020 for her essay collection  Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning , a book so searing and powerful it landed her on the cover of  Time  magazine’s 2021 issue featuring the 100 most influential people in the...

This week features a conversation on humor in fiction featuring two masters of the genre: Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Thingas and, most recently, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, the story of a lesbian clown navigating life, love, and art in Florida; and Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins and, most recently, So Far Gone, about a journalist living off the grid who is forced back into...

Portland Book Festival has been a proud partner of the National Book Foundation Presents program for many years now, and at the 2025 festival we featured a program called “The Cost of Hope,” moderated by National Book Foundation executive director Ruth Dickey, and featuring 2024 National Book Award in Nonfiction winner Jason De Leon, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of...

Every year, the Multnomah County Library chooses one book they hope the whole city will read. Between January and April, the Library, and their partner organizations, host events based around the themes of the book, and they distribute thousands of free copies—thanks to the Library Foundation—to readers of all ages from across the county. At Literary Arts, our role is to bring the author to town f...

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, three short story collections and several works of nonfiction. He has written countless articles, plays, an opera libretto and a collection of poetry, and been a finalist for the Booker Prize multiple times He is perhaps best known for his novel Brooklyn , which was made into a movie that was nominated for three Oscars. Set in the middle of the 20th cent...

If you like Heated Rivalry – if you don’t, you’re the only one, but anyway – if you like Heated Rivalry and want more queer romance but wish it had more wine, we’ve got the books for you. This week’s conversation is features queer romance at the 2025 Portland Book Festival, with authors Jasmine Guillory, Adib Khorram, and moderator Anita Kelly. Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling au...

In 2016 Tara Roberts was living in Washington DC feeling, in a new way, the deep fractures in America, including the way we understand our history.  She felt called to be part of trying to heal these divisions.   It was a chance encounter with a photograph at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that changed the trajectory of her life.  It was of a group of Black women on a...

Baldwin was key figure in the American civil rights movement of the last 1960s, and he is one of our most important American writers. Author of the novels If Beale Street Could Talk , Go Tell It on the Mountain , and Giovanni’s Room , he was also an essayist, poet, and playwright. Baldwin’s influence continues to grow, but even if you’ve never read a word James Baldwin has written – first, you sho...

We’re back at the 2025 Portland Book Festival this week, with poets m. mick powell and Taylor Byas, and moderater Jae Nichelle.    Taylor Byas’s second collection, Resting Bitch Face, uses watching and surveillance to explore Black female subjectivity. Byas engages with multiple art forms — painting, film, sculpture, and photographs – to explore the perspectives of artist and muse, of watche...

In this episode, we feature the beloved Irish novelist Emma Donoghue, in conversation with OPB’s Crystal Ligori, from the 2025 Portland Book Festival.  Emma Donoghue has extraordinary range, writing for the screen, and the stage, as well as authoring many acclaimed novels. Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth...

In this episode, we feature two of Oregon’s most accomplished writers, Omar El Akkad and Karen Russell from a conversation that took place at the 2025 Portland Book Festival.  They were joined onstage by Willamette Week ‘s arts and culture editor Rachel Saslow for a conversation about the ongoing American reckoning of its violent past and present. Russell’s novel The Antidote is...