The Archive Project

This episode features internationally acclaimed and award-winning writer Michael Ondaatje reading primarily from his canon of poetry. Spanning decades and continents, Ondaatje’s work gives a glimpse into a poetic mind turned novelist. This reading crosses the globe, jumping from Ondaatje’s native Colombo, Sri Lanka to his eventual home in Toronto, Canada. A skilled reader in addition to his poetic...

How do we create art from our own wounds and wonders? In their poetry, memoirs, and essays, writers Kaveh Akbar, Melissa Febos, and Megan Stielstra reckon with personal trauma and healing. Tracking the joys and pains of the path through addiction, and wrestling with desire, inheritance and faith,  Calling a Wolf a Wolf  is the darkly sumptuous debut from award-winning poet Kaveh Akbar . His are po...

This episode features acclaimed chef and food writer Ruth Reichl as she discusses her rise to fame, the intersection of food and storytelling, and the future of fine dining. Reichl deftly illustrates her own trajectory through the food world, beginning in the Berkeley, CA culinary revolution of the 1970s, through her time as a disguise-donning food critic for the New York Times , to the publicatio...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we celebrate Portland’s creative youth during our sixth annual Verselandia! poetry slam. This city-wide event features students from Parkrose, Roosevelt, Metropolitan Learning Center, Benson, Lincoln, Gresham, Sam Barlow, Franklin, Madison, Wilson, Jefferson, Grant, and Cleveland high schools. Verselandia! is the Grand Slam for the winners from individual s...

In this episode of The Archive Project , author Mohsin Hamid discusses the themes in his novel Exit West , Multnomah County Library’s 2018 Everybody Reads selection. About  Exit West :  Shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize,  Exit West  tells the story of Nadia and Saeed, who begin their love affair against an increasingly unsettling backdrop of unrest and violence. As the city turns into a pa...

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single event during Lit Crawl Portland 2017. Lit Crawl is an eclectic mix of literary events staged in nontraditional locations. From poetry readings in bars to literary trivia and karaoke in hotel lobbies, Lit Crawl seeks to unite readers and writers in a single night jam-packed with literary fun...

In this episode of The Archive Project , bestselling authors Maile Meloy and Claire Messud discuss their 2017 new releases. Their books examine psychological mysteries where children go missing and painful truths are revealed in crisis, and that explore the spaces between childhood innocence and the hard realities of adulthood. In Maile Meloy’s Do Not Become Alarmed,  the children go missing while...

This episode of The Archive Project features author Salman Rushdie reading from and discussing his 1999 New York Times bestseller The Ground Beneath Her Feet . In his remaking of the myth of Orpheus, Rushdie tells the story of Vina Apsara, a pop star, and Ormus Cama, an extraordinary songwriter and musician, who captivate and change the world through their music and their romance. Beginning in Bom...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Doree Shafrir and Ellen Ullman discuss their work as authors and as women in the booming, male-dominated world of technology. Shafrir’s Startup tells the stories of Mack, Katya, and Sabrina, three very different people whose lives become perilously engulfed in a tech startup scandal. Ullman’s second memoir, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology , t...

This episode of The Archive Project features great American author Philip Roth reading from his 1991 memoir Patrimony: A True Story . Patrimony  is a true story about the relationship between a father and a son. In this masterful and tender memoir, Philip Roth watches as his 86-year-old father, famous for his vigor, his charm, and his skill as a raconteur—lovingly called ‘the Bard of Newark&...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Omar El Akkad, Benjamin Percy, and Lidia Yuknavitch discuss their newest works in a conversation titled “Resistance and Rebellion: Dystopian Fiction” at the 2017 Portland Book Festival. El Akkad’s début novel American War imagines an American landscape devastated by its second Civil War and tells the story of the young woman who carries the war-...

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...