The Archive Project

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...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Michael Lewis – in conversation with NPR’s Hanna Rosin – discusses his latest book, The Undoing Project . He describes the unique and powerful emotional core of the working relationship between Nobel-Prize winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the monumental work they did in the field of mental biases and flawed perceptions, and why he was...

Mary Oliver reads poems from several of her collections, focusing on brief images of the natural world that she believes people need to attend. These poems include “Messenger,” “Thirst,” “Percy 1,” “The Swan,” “Beans,” “Swimming with Otter,” “Wild Geese,” “Percy 2,” “There you were and it was like spring,” and “The Sun.” Between poems, Oliver shares details about her personal life, including her t...

Carlos Fuentes gives a talk titled “After the Cold War: The Rise of a New Agenda.” It is the keynote address for a conference intended to help Oregonians put into a global perspective the cultural, economic, and political significance of the emerging Hispanic population of Oregon and the United States. Fuentes discusses the changes taking place in the world since the end of World War II, mainly fo...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Diane Ackerman shares the incredible, true story of Antonina Żabińska, whose diary she draws from in The Zookeeper’s Wife . She reads a selection from the book, and expands upon the history of the Żabińska family’s heroic efforts to save over 300 people during WWII by moving them through the underground railroad that ran through their home and zoo. She also...

Michael Pollan begins his lecture by praising Portland for being one of the incubators of true healthy eating before moving on to discuss the new American food culture. He describes how many Americans have developed an unhealthy obsession with being healthy, which has actually backfired, as evidenced by the obesity epidemic. He labels the prevailing American ideology as “nutritionalism,” which pla...

In this episode, Marjane Satrapi discusses her writing and art, specifically the film production of Persepolis (2000). She first establishes that she makes “comics” not “graphic novels,” dismissing the term “graphic novel” as a marketing ploy among publishing companies. She also establishes that the comic form is not a genre, but an artistic medium—one that allows for narrative structures that are...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Don DeLillo and Noah Hawley begin at the end, discussing DeLillo’s writing process for each segment of his novels from finish to start. Throughout this conversation, DeLillo delves into some of the research related to several of the books he has written throughout his career. He and Hawley also compare the process of writing a novel to the process of writing...

This Liars’ League event is filled with stories on the theme “Natives & Transplants,” and features stories by writers Lowrey Brown, Vanessa McKiel, Dan Coxon, Evelyn Sharenov and Hamish Rickett; performed by actors Karen Farley, Reema Zaman, Gabriella Kirby, Kim Bogus and Karen J. Moore. This event was hosted at Literary Arts on February 18th, 2017. Liars’ League was founded in Londo...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Malcolm Gladwell examines the idea of the underdog (namely, why the underdog persists in their quest despite the odds) through the story of Alva Belmont, also known as Alva Vanderbilt, a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and major figure of the suffragette movement in the early 20 th century. “Why do underdogs fight? We have all of these c...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Tracy K. Smith, explores why our position as readers and writers continues to be crucial to the viability of our culture. She discusses literature’s role in both her private and public life, shares excerpts from her own writings, and gives insights into the process and struggle by which her poems come about. She also shares selec...

With his trademark wit and humor, David Remnick shares personal stories from his career in journalism and talks about other editors and authors whom he has admired. He begins by recounting how he landed his first job at The Washington Post (narrowly dodging a placement that might have had him working in Everett, WA). He then expands on his time spent working for The Washington Post in Moscow in th...

In this lecture, Siddhartha Mukherjee dives into the complex topic of genetic research and why he wanted to write The Gene: An Intimate History , reasons of which include his family’s own history with genetic diseases. He shares the timeline of historic discoveries in the science of genes, from Gregor Mendel’s work with inheritance patterns in pea plants to modern-day somatic cell and germ line ge...

In this recording, Michael Ondaatje shares his fourth novel, Anil’s Ghost . He begins by giving an overview of the plot, which is set in a civil war-torn Sri Lanka at the end of the twentieth century. The story follows Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, and educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist to investigate human rights violations....

This Liars’ League event is filled with stories on the theme “Natives & Transplants,” and features stories by writers Lowrey Brown, Vanessa McKiel, Dan Coxon, Evelyn Sharenov and Hamish Rickett; performed by actors Karen Farley, Reema Zaman, Gabriella Kirby, Kim Bogus and Karen J. Moore. This event was hosted at Literary Arts on February 18th, 2017. Liars’ League was founded in Londo...