The Archive Project

This episode features Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen reading from his novel The Sympathizer. Between readings, Nguyen humorously meditates on his own refugee experience as a Vietnamese American growing up in post-war Sacramento, California. A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel,  The Sympathizer  is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose poli...

In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, cultural critic, journalist, and professor Margo Jefferson asks, “How do we teach ourselves to go beyond the limits of our own experience?” The daughter of a prominent physician and social worker-turned-socialite mother, Jefferson grew up in an upper-middle class black neighborhood of Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. In this lecture, Jefferson uses her...

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 is a special episode featuring a staged reading of Cindy Williams Gutiérrez’s Words That Burn , winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award for Drama. Words That Burn  is a dramatization of the World War II experiences of William Stafford, Lawson Inada, and Guy Gabaldón. Especially relevant in today’s political climate, Words That Burn brings to life the distinctive voices of a conscientio...

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 episode of The Archive Project , New Yorker staff writer George Packer speaks on the subject of “American Identity in the Age of Trump” using the lens of his most recent book, The Unwinding . In this work of nonfiction, Packer tells the political and socio-economic story of the past three decades by journeying through the lives of several Americans, including a son of tobacco farmers...

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...

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 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 b...

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 award-winning poet and thinker Claudia Rankine discussing race in America in the years since the publication of her hybrid form volume of poetry Citizen: An American Lyric. In this lecture, Rankine explores not only what it means to be black in America today, but how the black experience relates to what we unconsciously consider the standard, white experience. In a society th...

This episode of The Archive Project features New York Times bestselling author in conversation with fellow nonfiction favorite Chuck Klosterman, discussing life, career, and the ethics of writing nonfiction. In her newest collection of essays, Look Alive Out There , Crosley explores active volcanoes, crashing shivas, befriending swingers, and squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, always...

This episode features Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen reading from his novel The Sympathizer. Between readings, Nguyen humorously meditates on his own refugee experience as a Vietnamese American growing up in post-war Sacramento, California. A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel,  The Sympathizer  is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose poli...

Pretend boyfriends, arranged marriages, getting photographed by the paparazzi? These YA novelists don’t write your typical love stories. In Sandhya Menon’s  When Dimple Met Rishi , two first-generation Indian-American teens are set up by their parents in an arranged marriage, but the plans backfire when they are paired up at the same coding camp. In Zan Romanoff’s  Grace and the Fever,  Grace is s...

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-...