Episodes

This episode of The Archive Project features highlights from the 2021 Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America. Listen to excerpts from longer discussions between novelist Brandon Taylor and Genevieve Hudson, cartoonist Aminder Dhaliwal and OPB’s Tiffany Camhi, and legendary poet Rita Dove and Mary Szybist. The Portland Book Festival presents a diverse range of writers who have recently published novels, story collections, works of nonfiction and poetry. There are over 50 writers in...

Grace Bonney, author of the bestselling books In the Company of Women and Design*Sponge at Home, leads this conversation with three of the women from her newest book, Collective Wisdom: Lessons, Wisdom, and Advice from Women Over 50. Lisa Congdon, Ngọc Minh Ngo, and Sonoko Sakai discuss their sources of creativity, what makes them feel empowered, and how they view common misconceptions about aging. Grace Bonney is the author of the bestselling books In the Company of Women and Design*Sponge at ...

This special podcast-only episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project, features a reunion of a panel discussion from the 2017 Portland Book Festival. (In fact, you can hear the original event on The Archive Project here.) Join poet Kaveh Akbar (Pilgrim Bell), memoirist and essayist Melissa Febos (Girlhood), and essayist Megan Stielstra (Once I Was Cool) and moderator Marisa Siegel (The Rumpus) as they revisit their 2017 discussion and share their new books and projects. Kaveh Akbar’s second f...

Historical fiction often blurs the lines between truth and story. Authors A. K. Blakemore and Rivka Galchen each have new books out that explore the very real witch trials of the 17th century. But their approach to the subject matter and the characters at the center of each story feel like opposite sides of the same coin. Blakemore’s The Manningtree Witches is set in 1643 and follows the young, single, and naïve Rebecca West, who is being pursued by the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General. Galc...

This special podcast-only episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project, features John Freeman, editor of Freeman’s, in conversation with French author and translator Jakuta Alikavazovic; Yugoslav-born writer Lana Bastašić; and novelists and memoirist Aleksandar Hemon. All three possess one connection or another to Bosnia. In this conversation, they discuss the Bosnian diaspora, writing works in translation, and the power of language and memory to create “home.” “I’m still creating this languag...

In this episode, we feature an event from the 2021 Portland Book Festival, moderated by author and editor, John Freeman. The event title keyed off of Freeman’s anthology of the same name: Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World. Freeman sat down with authors Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Kawai Strong Washburn to talk about writing and the environment, and the conversation naturally turns to language and its relationship to history, connection, identity and t...

In this episode, we feature two conversations from the 2020 Portland Book Festival that both wrestle with the question of how we look after each other when mental and physical health have been compromised. What do we owe each other, and when do we walk away? In the first segment of the show we feature Robert Kolker who joined us to talk about his new work of nonfiction Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family. The book is the heartrending story of a midcentury American family, ...

In this episode, we feature a conversation between novelists Rumaan Alam and Jonathan Lethem from the 2020 Portland Book Festival. There is a rich tradition of the apocalyptic novel. As Alam and Lethem touch on, the urgency in this tradition allows writers to explore what really matters to their characters, and asks what we will keep and what we will forget when push comes to shove. The scope of these works range from, as Lethem says, “wide screen” narratives of entire societies being transform...

Portland Book Festival will present virtual programming, brought to you by Bank of America, the week of November 8–12, 2021, and in-person events on Saturday, November 13, 2021. Get your passes now! In this episode, we feature a conversation with Brit Bennett and Bryan Washington, moderated by Jennifer Baker, at the Portland Book Festival in November 2020. In the New York Times best-selling The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett weaves together multiple strands and generations of a family, from the ...

Portland Book Festival will present virtual programming, brought to you by Bank of America, the week of November 8–12, 2021, and in-person events on Saturday, November 13, 2021. Get your passes now! In this episode, we feature Isabel Wilkerson, interviewed by Viet Thanh Nguyen, from the 2020 Portland Book Festival. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Isabel Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal for “her masterful combination of intimate human narratives with broader societal trends” and f...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a talk and conversation with novelist Yaa Gyasi. In 2016, Gyasi’s first novel, Homegoing, was published and immediately became a New York Times’ bestseller, was awarded numerous prizes, and was praised by Zadie Smith as “spectacular,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates as “an inspiration,” and widely hailed as one of the best books of that year. This spring, Gyasi joined us for Portland Arts & Lectures to talk about her second book, Transcendent Kingdom, publi...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature poet Joy Harjo. Harjo became the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States when she was appointed in 2019, and is currently serving her third term in that post. She joined us as part of Portland Arts & Lectures from her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During her Laureateship, she edited two landmark anthologies: When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and Living Natio...

In this episode, we feature Alison Bechdel in conversation with Oregon’s own Cheryl Strayed. Strayed talks with Bechdel about her newest book The Secret to Superhuman Strength. The graphic memoir is ostensibly about Bechdel’s lifelong pursuit of exercise in one form or another. But like so much of Bechdel’s work, the book is not necessarily about what it’s about. Bechdel’s obsession with exercise is driven by her desire to be physically strong and resilient, but it is also a tool to clear her mi...

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Maxine Hong Kingston was born in Stockton, California. Her debut book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among the Ghosts, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976 and gained her worldwide attention. Her follow-up book, China Men, won the 1981 National Book Award, and Kingston has said she considers these books two halves of a whole. In all, she has published over a half dozen books of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction and won many additional awa...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we bring you poet and dramatist Cornelius Eady, from a Poetry Downtown event in 2002. Cornelius Eady published his first book of poetry, Kartunes, in 1980, at the age of 26. He went on to publish seven more books of poetry over the next 20 years, winning numerous prizes and being nominated as a finalist for a National Book Award. In the 1990s and early 2000’s, Eady also wrote for the stage, collaborating in several projects that resulted in several more na...

In this episode, we feature a talk and reading by Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, the late Seamus Heaney from Portland Arts & Lectures in 2002. Heaney opens with poems from his very first collection and then takes us on a journey through more than four decades of his work that touches on everything from the sounds and smells of his mother baking bread in the 1940s, to his deep knowledge of poetry and its influence on his work, to meditations on the role of the artist in moments of political or na...

In this episode we feature a conversation with Heather McGhee. For nearly two decades, McGhee has been involved in the fight against inequality by designing and advocating for polices in the public and private sectors. She has advised presidential candidates and fortune 500 companies, testified in congress, and lead the think tank Demos which argued before the Supreme Court and helped pass pro-voter reforms in five states. In 2021 McGhee published her first book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs ...

In this episode, we’re going back into the archive all the way to 1997 to bring you journalist and author Orville Schell. Since 1970, Schell has been reporting widely on China for mainstream newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic, to more academic publications like China Quarterly and Foreign Affairs. At the time of this lecture, Schell was at work on a book entitled Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood. That book an...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Helen Macdonald from an online Portland Arts & Lectures event in October 2020. Helen Macdonald is a multitalented naturalist, illustrator, writer, and historian of science at the University of Cambridge. She has worked as a professional falconer and has assisted with raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. Her 2016 book, H Is for Hawk, much like Macdonald herself, defies any single label. At once memoir, natural history, litera...

In this episode, we feature some of the incredible slam poets who performed as part of Verselandia! 2019: The annual city-wide youth poetry slam, presented by Literary Arts. High school students across the city spend the year writing and competing with their peers, and each April about twenty finalists compete for the title of Portland Slam Champ. These young poets are a thrill to hear. They will give you the chills and perhaps bring tears to your eyes. And at this moment when it feels like our...

In this episode, we feature poet and essayist Adrienne Rich, who visited Portland as a part of our Poetry Downtown series in 2006. Adrienne Rich was one of the most widely read and influential public intellectuals of the late 20th century, and her work often spoke directly to social justice issues. Born in 1929, Rich published over thirty books of poetry and essays. She passed away in 2013. Judith Barrington—Oregon-based poet, memoirist, and teacher—made the original introduction at the event, ...

This episode features award-winning poet and playwright Claudia Rankine in conversation with Jericho Brown at the 2020 Portland Book Festival. This event was presented by West x Midwest, a collaboration between Black Mountain Institute, The Loft’s Wordplay, the Wisconsin Book Festival, and Literary Arts. Claudia Rankine joined us at the Portland Book Festival to talk about her latest collection Just Us: An American Conversation. The book completes a trilogy that includes Don’t Let Me Be Lonely ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, novelist Min Jin Lee discusses her writing craft and inspiring personal journey to become a professional writer. With warm humor, Lee honestly opens up about her struggle to succeed—as a Korean-born American immigrant battling a life-threatening chronic illness—within the publishing industry, and details her perseverance in the face of countless rejection letters. A life-long reader and lover of books, Lee shines as she speaks of the necessity of the arts ...

This episode features a conversation between Margaret Atwood and Portland’s own Karen Russell, which took place during the virtual 2020 Portland Book Festival. With a career spanning decades, genres, and forms, Margaret Atwood is easily one of the most important writers alive today. She has been published in 45 countries, and written seminal works of fiction that have become a part of the cultural fabric and touchstones for millions of readers. But while many are familiar with Atwood’s fiction, ...