The Archive Project

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature a talk and conversation with novelist Yaa Gyasi. In 2016, Gyasi’s first novel, Homegoing , was published and immediately became a New York Times’ bestseller, was awarded numerous prizes, and was praised by Zadie Smith as “spectacular,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates as “an inspiration,” and widely hailed as one of the best books of that year. This spring, G...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature poet Joy Harjo. Harjo became the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States when she was appointed in 2019, and is currently serving her third term in that post. She joined us as part of Portland Arts & Lectures from her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During her Laureateship, she edited two landmark anthologies: When the Light of the...

In this episode, we feature Alison Bechdel in conversation with Oregon’s own Cheryl Strayed. Strayed talks with Bechdel about her newest book The Secret to Superhuman Strength . The graphic memoir is ostensibly about Bechdel’s lifelong pursuit of exercise in one form or another. But like so much of Bechdel’s work, the book is not necessarily about what it’s about. Bechdel’s obsession with exercise...

In this episode, we bring you writer Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights . We hosted Gay in the culminating event of Multnomah County Library’s 2021 Everybody Reads program—an annual shared reading experience that includes city-wide events for readers of all ages. This year, because of the public health restrictions, we brought Ross Gay to Portland virtually. He gave an incredible lecture and...

This episode of The Archive Project is part of an ongoing series featuring conversations curated and lead by Oregon’s Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani. Anis invited two writers to join him in conversation. Both are primarily poets, but have recently authored books of nonfiction about the intersection of American history, culture, and the African-American experience. Hanif Abdurraqib is the author of two...

Our 34th annual Oregon Book Awards is presented in this special, state-wide broadcast and podcast episode, with special thanks to our partners at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Since 1987, the Oregon Book Awards have celebrated the work of our state’s authors. This year, 173 books from 41 towns across Oregon were submitted. Out-of-state judges determined the finalists and winners. In this episode of...

Artists Repertory Theatre (also known as Artists Rep or ART) is the oldest running theatre company in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1982, Artists Rep is in its 39 th year of making intimate, provocative theatre. As is true for most organizations and businesses, Artists Rep was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. They had to shutter its regularly scheduled performances and pivot to alternative progra...

In this episode, we feature some of the incredible slam poets who performed as part of Verselandia! 2019: The annual city-wide youth poetry slam, presented by Literary Arts. High school students across the city spend the year writing and competing with their peers, and each April about twenty finalists compete for the title of Portland Slam Champ. These young poets are a thrill to hear. They will...

In this episode, we feature poet and essayist Adrienne Rich, who visited Portland as a part of our Poetry Downtown series in 2006. Adrienne Rich was one of the most widely read and influential public intellectuals of the late 20 th century, and her work often spoke directly to social justice issues. Born in 1929, Rich published over thirty books of poetry and essays. She passed away in 2013. Judit...

In this episode, we feature a talk and reading by Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, the late Seamus Heaney from Portland Arts & Lectures in 2002. Heaney opens with poems from his very first collection and then takes us on a journey through more than four decades of his work that touches on everything from the sounds and smells of his mother baking bread in the 1940s, to his deep knowledge of poet...

We collaborated with Portland Center Stage to bring you this episode celebrating the Afro-futurist sci-fi audio thriller, PROTOCOL . Portland Center Stage produced PROTOCOL for its PCS Remix season. We’ll hear a segment of the pilot episode of PROTOCOL and then dive into a conversation between Chip Miller, the associate artistic director of Portland Center Stage, with lead artist on the project Ph...

In this episode, we feature two conversations from the 2020 Portland Book Festival that both wrestle with the question of how we look after each other when mental and physical health have been compromised. What do we owe each other, and when do we walk away? In the first segment of the show we feature Robert Kolker who joined us to talk about his new work of nonfiction Hidden Valley Road: Inside t...

In this episode we feature a conversation with Heather McGhee. For nearly two decades, McGhee has been involved in the fight against inequality by designing and advocating for polices in the public and private sectors. She has advised presidential candidates and fortune 500 companies, testified in congress, and lead the think tank Demos which argued before the Supreme Court and helped pass pro-vot...

In this episode, we feature a conversation between novelists Rumaan Alam and Jonathan Lethem from the 2020 Portland Book Festival. There is a rich tradition of the apocalyptic novel. As Alam and Lethem touch on, the urgency in this tradition allows writers to explore what really matters to their characters, and asks what we will keep and what we will forget when push comes to shove. The scope of t...

In this episode, we’re going back into the archive all the way to 1997 to bring you journalist and author Orville Schell. Since 1970, Schell has been reporting widely on China for mainstream newspapers and magazines like the New York Times , the New Yorker , and the Atlantic , to more academic publications like China Quarterly and Foreign Affairs . At the time of this lecture, Schell was at work o...

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Brit Bennett and Bryan Washington, moderated by Jennifer Baker, at the Portland Book Festival in November 2020. In the New York Times best-selling The Vanishing Half , Brit Bennett weaves together multiple strands and generations of a family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990’s. It’s a story that considers the lasting infl...

In this episode, we feature novelist Madeline Miller. When we hosted Miller in January 2021, she had not one but two books on the New York Times Best Seller list: The Song of Achilles and Circe . Both books are retellings, in novel form, of ancient Greek myths. But they are also more than simply retellings. Her books are the reinterpreting of myths that reveal new truths from these ancient stories...

This episode features novelist Jess Walter in conversation with Andrew Proctor at the 2020 Portland Book Festival. There are few writers with such breadth and accomplishment as Walter. He began his career as a journalist for The Spokesman-Review , where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. Since then, he has gone on to publish nonfiction, stories, and novels, and also work as a screenwriter....

This episode features award-winning poet and playwright Claudia Rankine in conversation with Jericho Brown at the 2020 Portland Book Festival. This event was presented by West x Midwest, a collaboration between Black Mountain Institute , The Loft’s Wordplay , the Wisconsin Book Festival , and Literary Arts. Claudia Rankine joined us at the Portland Book Festival to talk about her latest collection...

For over 50 years, Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction and fantasy books offered hope and inspiration to readers and writers everywhere. Le Guin passed away on January 22, 2018. This live event, presented in Portland, Oregon on June 13, 2018, featured tributes from writers and friends who represent the wide-ranging influence Le Guin has had on international literature for more than 50 years, inclu...

This episode features a conversation between Margaret Atwood and Portland’s own Karen Russell, which took place during the virtual 2020 Portland Book Festival. With a career spanning decades, genres, and forms, Margaret Atwood is easily one of the most important writers alive today. She has been published in 45 countries, and written seminal works of fiction that have become a part of the cultural...

Barry Lopez: 1945–2020 In this episode, one of Oregon’s most celebrated authors, Barry Lopez, discussed his latest nonfiction book, Horizon , with Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts. The two discussed the themes behind the book, including the environmental crisis at hand. A work thirty years in the making, Horizon defies category. It is not merely travel, science, or nature writin...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Helen Macdonald from an online Portland Arts & Lectures event in October 2020. Helen Macdonald is a multitalented naturalist, illustrator, writer, and historian of science at the University of Cambridge. She has worked as a professional falconer and has assisted with raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. Her 2016 book, H I...

In this episode, we feature Isabel Wilkerson, interviewed by Viet Thanh Nguyen, from the 2020 Portland Book Festival. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Isabel Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal for “her masterful combination of intimate human narratives with broader societal trends” and for “championing an unsung history.” This was for her first book The Warmth of Other Suns , which chr...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Colson Whitehead interviewed by Mitchell S. Jackson in September 2020. There are few writers who are both as versatile and accomplished as Colson Whitehead. His subjects have ranged from elevator inspectors, to middle-class Black American suburbia, to the World Series of Poker; he has written noir, a zombie thriller, a semi-autobiographical comin...