The Archive Project

In this episode, we feature Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Omar El Akkad from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in October 2024.    Coates’ versatility and virtuosity as a writer makes him one of the most singular and important writers at work today. He first rose to national recognition as a staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine, and in particular for an article he wrote in 2014 titled The...

This week’s episode features one of the most highly anticipated conversations from the 2024 Portland Book Festival. Author Rachel Kushner joined the festival with her most recent novel, the Booker Prize finalist Creation Lake , her take on a noir spy thriller. We paired her with Danzy Senna, whose new novel is Colored Television , the story of a struggling novelist attempting to break into H...

This week we have a conversation between one of the ultimate literary power couples: Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt.     Paul Auster passed away in April of 2024. The New York Times obituary called him the “patron saint of literary Brooklyn.” He wrote screenplays, poetry, and nonfiction, but is probably best known as a novelist, and as an novelist his best known work is the New York Trilogy—City of...

This week’s episode features the trailblazing, legendary journalist: Connie Chung, in conversation about her new memoir, CONNIE . In her book, Chung shares the story of her decades-long career as an Asian woman in the white-male-dominated world of broadcast journalism, when she relentlessly pursued stories and fought hard for scoops. Her hard work – her schedule for many years was truly unbelievab...

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. Just one year after almost a decade in hiding from the Iranian government, Rushdie made his first public appearance in Portland, discussing the ideas, both mythical and musical, that inspired this New York Times bestseller. In his remaking o...

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...

“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” 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...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we take you behind the scenes at the 2024 Portland Book Festival, hosted by Literary Arts in downtown Portland on November 2, 2024. The festival featured over 100 writers in more than 50 events throughout the day. Our editor and producer Matthew Workman is stepping in front of the microphone for this one, guiding you through the festival as he searches for f...

“I’m always thinking: This is the story I know, but what is the story I haven’t been told?”   In this episode, we revisit a 2021 Portland Arts & Lectures conversation with 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 Gre...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we revisit 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 profitable b...

In 1989, an unknown writer named Amy Tan published a novel entitled The Joy Club , and the career of a major American writer was born. In this episode of The Archive Project , we are reaching deep into the archive to 1991, when we hosted Tan because there’s something very special about hearing from a writer at the very beginning of their career. At the time, The Joy Luck Club had been on the New Y...

This episode features Malcolm Gladwell in conversation about his newest book, Revenge of The Tipping Point . He spoke with Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor in front of a live audience in downtown Portland in October 2024. The Tipping Point hit shelves in 2000 and became a true cultural phenomenon, spending a whopping 334 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and turning everyo...

This episode features readings and conversations from an event entitled “I See My Light Shining.”  The event was a part of the Elders Project, which is sponsored by Columbia University and features interviews with African Americans from across the country. Here in Portland, acclaimed writer Renée Watson interviewed dozens of Portlanders about their lives for the project. Through the episode, we’ll...

This episode features a great event from the 2023 Portland Book Festival on the relationships between humans and animals, and on our ideas about the meaning of animals.    Erica Berry is the author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear , winner of the 2024 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction. Erica is based in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, and teaches in Literary Arts...

This week we have a conversation featuring Naomi Alderman, who joined us for Portland Book Festival in November 2023 for the very first event for her new novel, The Future . Alderman is the author of the mega best-seller, Barack Obama-endorsed, Margaret Atwood-mentored novel The Power . She talks with interviewer Omar El Akkad about the pressure she felt writing this follow-up, about a handful of...

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation with author Tommy Orange from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Viet Than Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his debut novel The Sympathizer , which sold more than one million copies worldwide, catapulted him to national fame. Since then, Nguyen has gone on to publish two more books of fiction, and a work o...

This episode is a celebration of the life of writer and teacher Tom Spanbauer, who passed away on September 21, 2024.       Born in rural Idaho in 1946, Spanbauer spent time in Kenya in the Peace Corps after attending Idaho State University. He returned to the United States in 1978 and moved several times before landing in New York City, where he earned an MFA from Columbia University 1988. He pub...

To close out the celebration of National Poetry Month, this episode featured poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil at the final event of the 2023-24 season of Portland Arts & Lectures.      Nezhukumatathil is an accomplished poet: Literally every one of her four published poetry collections is prize-winning, and she is the first-ever poetry editor of Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of...

This week, we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month with a conversation from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Jane Hirshfield is one of our most important living poets, and last year she released The Asking , a new and selected volume. Hirshfield has published ten volumes of poetry, two now-classic essay collections on the craft of poetry, and she has co-translated four books presenting worl...

As part of 2023 Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover, a weeklong event series with bookish events happening all over the Portland area, local bookstore Broadway Books hosted an evening honoring the late Oregon writer Barry Lopez. Broadway declared 2023 the “year of reading Barry Lopez,” and we gathered three writers to share their memories of Barry and what his work meant to them, centered on his...

We continue to celebrate National Poetry Month with a deep dive into Verselandia!, the annual city-wide high school poetry slam championship. In this week’s episode of The Archive Project, we’ll hear from some of the 2023 competitors, and we’ll follow a few 2024 hopefuls as they compete in their school slams.     Verselandia! was founded by a visionary team of Portland public high school librarian...

On this episode of  The Archive Project , we feature Barbara Kingsolver in conversation with Jess Walter. Barbara Kingsovler is the author of seventeen books, including nonfiction, short stories, poetry, and novels. Her novels include modern classics like  The Poisonwood Bible  and  The Lacuna . Kingsolver is known for socially engaged writing that embraces the psychological and emotional. As she...

This episode features Charles Yu at Portland Arts & Lectures on February 29, 2024.    Charles Yu first rose to national prominence in 2007 when his debut collection, Third Class Superhero was recognized by the National Book Foundation’s prestigious “Five under 35” program.      Yu has published three more books of fiction, including Interior Chinatown , which won the National Book Award in 202...

In this episode, we bring you a talk from Ruth Ozeki. It was the culminating event of the 2023 Everybody Reads program. Every year, the Multnomah County Library chooses one book they hope the whole city will read. Between January and April, the Library, and their partner organizations, host events based around the themes of the book, and they distribute thousands of free copies—thanks to the Libra...

This episode is a conversation from the 2023 Portland Book Festival on food, cooking, family, traditions, and storytelling. And like some of the best meals, it just happens to be … vegetarian.   Portland’s superstar chef Gregory Gourdet, chef/owner at  kann , which was awarded “Best New Restaurant 2023” from multiple outlets, including the James Beard Awards, is also the author of a wonderful cook...