The Archive Project

This episode of The Archive Project features a conversation between Academy Award-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg and Portland novelist and screenwriter Jon Raymond, recorded at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival in 2015. Eisenberg is known for his iconic film roles, as well as regular pieces in The New Yorker and three critically acclaimed plays. During this conversation, he presents his fiction...

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 superv...

In this episode of The Archive Project, former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses the past, present, and future state of the world in the context of global warming. He supports his argument for the need for change with extensive scientific research and discusses the merits of various alternative energy resources. He focuses the latter half of his lecture on emphasizing the...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Andrei Codrescu shares an epic poem he wrote in honor of Portland’s Lovejoy Columns, which once supported the now demolished Lovejoy Ramp at the Pearl District entrance to the Broadway Bridge. The columns themselves were sparred from demolition by the efforts of the architectural group Rigga, who are introduced at the beginning of Codrescu’s lecture. Followi...

In this episode of The Archive Project, New Yorker columnist Brendan Gill examines city life in context of the writings of Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and critic best known for his studies of urban architecture. Gill reads from Mumford’s works, inserting his own concerns and humorous anecdotes along the way. He goes on to discuss urban influx, the integrity of c...

On April 5, 2016, former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove was honored as Oregon State University’s Stone Award winner. The Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement honors a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed work and been a dedicated mentor to succeeding generations of young writers. In her acceptance interview with OSU Associate Professor of English & Creati...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Literary Arts presents a rare public appearance by one of Oregon’s greatest entrepreneurs, Phil Knight, for the release of his 2016 memoir, Shoe Dog . In this candid and riveting memoir, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic and...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Cristina Henríquez discusses the real-life inspirations behind the characters in her novel, The Book of Unknown Americans , namely her parents and the various communities she engaged with when moving to several different cities throughout her childhood. She goes on to discuss the power of imagination, fiction, and reading to help people build stronger conne...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Yann Martel reads selections from his novel Life of Pi , which received the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and was later adapted into a feature film. Between readings, Martel shares information about his writing process and his overarching philosophy behind the book. At the conclusion of the reading, he answers a series of questions from the audience, including th...

Click here to view the slideshow Lewis references during her lecture. In this episode of The Archive Project , poet, scholar, and National Book Award winner Robin Coste Lewis presents on “The Race Within Erasure.” Lewis first became widely known in 2015, when her debut poetry collection,  Voyage of the Sable Venus  won the National Book Award in poetry –– it was the first time a poetry debut by an...

In this episode of The Archive Project , Elmore Leonard shares stories, often humorous, about his correspondences with his readers—from teenagers who ask how he has perfected the portrayal of criminals in his writing to adults who sell his letters for hundreds of dollars. He also notes how the letters portray varying reactions to his writing, demonstrating how readers and writers often view the sa...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Adam Gopnik, who joined us for Portland Arts & Lectures in 2016. Gopnik is best known for his work at The New Yorker , where he has written on wide ranging topics such as Mark Twain, hockey, dogs, Icelandic coffee, Babar the Elephant, snowflakes, magicians, the New York Jets, spirituality, and aging among others. But perhaps where Gopnik is h...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Orhan Pamuk discusses his published works and why he writes about Turkey so much: to him, this act is not only about portraying the city to outsiders, but also about retracing his memories of the city. He reads from Other Colors , a collection of articles and notes from his personal journals, which comprise ideas and segments of writing he wanted to include...

On this episode of The Archive Project, Mark Bittman addresses the politics of food and the negative impact current food trends in America are having on the world. He defines food as something nutritious and contrasts this with the sugary junk food—or “nonfood”—that many Americans consume on a daily basis. According to Bittman, America needs a more sustainable, democratic food system in order to s...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Bill Buford discusses his history working at Granta , including iconic magazine covers and experimentations with the magazine’s content. He goes on to talk about being an editor for Granta Books, stating that it is “the aim of every editor, at some point in his or her life, to get arrested.” Later, he discusses his research for Among the Thugs , a nonfiction...

On this episode of The Archive Project , Sharon Olds begins her lecture by reading a poem by Langston Hughes called “Luck,” which she tells the audience she memorized on the subway in New York City. From there, she reads several of her poems on the theme of family and personal life, including a description of her experience learning to read and her memory of running through the airport on the way...

This episode of The Archive Project , features a lecture from prolific author Jonathan Lethem from 2007. As a writer, Lethem melds genres, often mixing crime and sci-fi with more traditional fiction. He is also known for his unpretentious incorporation of American pop-culture into his works. In this lecture, Lethem’s dry humor, sincerity, literary allusions, and post-modern sensibility are o...

In this episode of The Archive Project, actors from The Milagro Theatre read excerpts from Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans , Multnomah County Library’s 2016 Everybody Reads selection. Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans explores the lives of two families who have come to the United States from Mexico and Panama, as well as the experiences of men and women who have...

Tom Brokaw begins his lecture with a humorous discussion of his transition into retirement as one of the leading American television journalists of the late 20th century. He turns his attention to more serious subjects following this, focusing the remainder of his talk on the major social developments of the 20 th century, how these have shaped the attitudes and actions of Americans today, and wha...

In this episode we feature the iconic writer of nonfiction, Joan Didion, from a special event in 2001. She briefly reads from her then new book Political Fictions , and then talks with David Sarasohn from The Oregonian . Didion’s career began in 1956 when she began writing for Vogue . Since then, she wrote more than a dozen books of essays and nonfiction, including the 2005 national bestseller The...

Lydia Davis begins her lecture by explaining her attempt to find a balance between poetry and prose through writing short stories. She discusses several of her favorite authors—including Samuel Beckett, Russell Edson, and Bob Pearlman—and reads short selections from their works. Davis also discusses her work translating Proust and Flaubert, among others. She then reads from a New York poet named S...

Stephen Greenblatt begins his lecture with a discussion of censorship and religious toleration in early Christian Europe. He distinguishes Christianity from earlier Pagan and Jewish ideologies by emphasizing its commitment to a “single absolute doctrinal coherence” and the ways in which the church dealt with heretics. Greenblatt then moves on to discuss the influence of various theologians—includi...

Scholar and commentator Karen Armstrong begins her lecture by describing her youth in a nunnery, her subsequent departure and return to religion, and her understanding of religious stagnation. She compares modern concepts of God, in which The Almighty is basically a glorified human, to ancient ones, in which God was too great and too expansive to describe. Armstrong proposes that once God is reduc...

Recorded at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival on November 7, 2015, the panel “Lost & Found: Fiction on the Threshold” brings authors Carmiel Banasky ( The Suicide of Claire Bishop ), Sloane Crosley ( The Clasp ), Katherine Taylor ( Valley Fever ), and Vendela Vida ( The Driver’s Clothes Lie Empty ) together to discuss their lost characters and what it means to be found. Each of these four wr...

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 , the fol...