Episodes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Colson Whitehead interviewed by Mitchell S. Jackson in September 2020. There are few writers who are both as versatile and accomplished as Colson Whitehead. His subjects have ranged from elevator inspectors, to middle-class Black American suburbia, to the World Series of Poker; he has written noir, a zombie thriller, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, and historical fiction. At the same time, he has won dozens of awards and accolades, ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, journalist and bestselling author, Susan Orlean, talks about what kinds of topics spark her interest and her process of researching and writing The Library Book. Orlean shares the two kinds of stories that she is drawn to as a writer: Stories of new discoveries, and stories that are hiding in plain sight. The Library Book combines both of these qualities. On April 29, 1986, Los Angeles’s Central Library burned in a mysterious fire. 400,000 books were destr...

This episode of The Archive Project features highlights from the opening day of the 2020 Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America. Listen to excerpts from longer discussions. Novelists Emily Nemens, National Book Award-winner Charles Yu, and moderator Jon Raymond talk about ambition, disappointment, family, and the possibility of a new story. Claire Messud and Lydia Millet get into a cross-genre discussion, moderated by Alexander Chee. And finally, poets Nate Marshall, Jennifer Perri...

This episode of The Archive Project features highlights from the first week of the 2020 Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America. Listen to excerpts from longer discussions. Evette Dionne and Anne Helen Petersen discuss burnout, politics, and the unique pressures on millennials; poets Hafizah Geter, Justin Phillip Reed, and moderator Ashley Toliver explore displacement, violence, myth and memory in their collections; and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kawai Strong Washburn, with John Freeman...

This episode of The Archive Project features highlights from the opening day of the 2020 Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America. Listen to excerpts from longer discussions between short story writers Souvankham Thammavongsa and Lidia Yuknavitch, with moderator Marisa Siegel; novelists Chelsea Bieker and Kelli Jo Ford, with moderator Kesha Ajose Fisher; and memoirist Dr. Michele Harper in conversation with poet Ruth Dickey. To listen to full discussions from this episode, and the r...

The 2020 Portland Book Festival, presented by bank of america, will take place November 5-21, and will be presented virtually with most events available to view for free. For more information, including our lineup of authors & presenters, visit: literary-arts.org/pdxbookfest In this episode of The Archive Project, we revisit a panel discussion from the 2019 Portland Book Festival. The panel, titled High Stakes: Rebellion & Resistance, features Young Adult (YA) authors April Henry, Tehlor Kay Mej...

The 2020 Portland Book Festival, presented by bank of america, will take place November 5-21, and will be presented virtually with most events available to view for free. For more information, including our lineup of authors & presenters, visit: literary-arts.org/pdxbookfest Deadly Magic: Vengeance, Justice, and Destiny – a discussion on fantasy writing and craft from the 2018 Portland Book Festival. Secrets, magic, and extraordinary powers run through two fantastical YA series. Marissa Meyer, a...

In this episode of The Archive Project we revisit an event that took place at the 2019 Portland Book Festival. The panel, titled Look Closer: Poetry & Myth Remaking, features poets Sally Wen Mao, Paisley Rekdal, and Jake Skeets, with moderator Dao Strom. Myths come in many forms. There are the formal myths of different cultures such as gods and heroes, the creation of the world; there are national myths that define countries; and also childhood myths, family myths and personal myths. All are st...

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 story of one family, spread over 250 years and split by the slave trade across two continents. Both Whiteh...

This episode of The Archive Project features a conversation between 2020 Oregon Book Award winners Kesha Ajose Fisher and Ashley Toliver, with Oregon Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani. Much of their conversation focuses on craft—writing from the space of the unknown, writing as self-discovery, the role of time in the creative process—but they also discuss what it is like to cultivate a diligent writing practice while juggling motherhood, family, and all the other human demands during these especially t...

The 2020 Portland Book Festival will take place November 5-21, and will be presented virtually with most events available to view for free. For more information, including our lineup of authors & presenters, visit: literary-arts.org/pdxbookfest In this episode of The Archive Project we revisit an event that took place at the 2019 Portland Book Festival. The panel, titled Self Portrait: Memoir, Auto-Fiction and History, features three incredible Oregonian writers: Debra Gwartney, Mitchell S. Jack...

The 2020 Portland Book Festival will take place November 5-21, and will be presented virtually with most events available to view for free. For more information, including our lineup of authors & presenters, visit: literary-arts.org/pdxbookfest Note: Portions of this episode contain mature themes that may not be suitable for all audiences. This episode of The Archive Project features a panel conversation from the 2019 Portland Book Festival between Laurie Halse Anderson, Saeed Jones, and T Kira...

In this humorous and personal lecture, Tayari Jones discusses her complex journey to literary success, and her novel, An American Marriage. She describes the path her career has taken, from childhood to university and beyond, in which she’s made decisions to pursue writing despite receiving varying levels of support from educators, family, and the publishing industry. She finishes the talk by sharing a short selection from An American Marriage. An American Marriage is a stirring love story and ...

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 on full display as he discusses what has shaped him as a writer, including growing up in New York during the...

This episode of The Archive Project features Azar Nafisi, author of the acclaimed Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. In her lecture, Nafisi discusses Iranian literature and how it serves as a source of identity. She examines the fundamentalist Muslim identity in comparison to the national identity, concluding that people must focus on the literature of a nation in order to truly understand a culture. She also reflects on her life in England and her personal need to preserve Iran in her...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we highlight sections from three recent interviews shared through Literary Arts’ Long Distance podcast series. The Long Distance series was created during the COVID-19 pandemic as an online space where we can host conversational interviews with authors during a time when we are missing gathering in community—at bookstores and events—to hear from authors and talk about their books. Here we share discussions with three women of color, all of whom released d...

In this episode of Long Distance, debut novelist Raven Leilani talks with Literary Arts’ Amanda Bullock about Luster (on sale now!). Luster focuses on Edie, who is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, includin...

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 African-American had ever won the prize, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974. L...

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 in some of his books but ultimately left out. Throughout his lecture, Pamuk shares personal stories, ...

Jesmyn Ward is the author of the National Book Award-winning novels Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir Men We Reaped. Ward is in conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson, Whiting Award-winner, native Portlander, and author of the novel The Residue Years and nonfiction book Survival Math (forthcoming 2019). Both Ward and Jackson address the uncomfortable realities of the black experience in America in their work. In this conversation...

This episode of The Archive Project features an interview with Salman Rushdie from June 2020. This interview with Steph Opitz was presented through a partnership between the Wisconsin Book Festival, Literary Arts, Black Mountain Institute, and The Loft’s Wordplay, and was originally live-streamed online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rushdie and Opitz’s discussion focuses on Quichotte, Rushdie’s latest novel. Rushdie shares how his original inspiration for the novel was taken from Cervantes’ Don...

In this episode of Long Distance, Literary Arts’ Amanda Bullock interviews debut novelist Kelli Jo Ford. Ford’s Crooked Hallelujah (on sale now!) is a novel-in-stories which depicts a family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women as they sacrifice for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture. It is a big-hearted and ambitious novel of the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters. Ford and Bullock dive into a discussion about writing craft: How the idea for th...

Nikky Finney, the 2011 National Book Award winner for poetry, tells a full-house audience that her grandmother’s words have always guided her work as a poet: “To tell a lie is a sin of the highest order.” She gives extensive, fascinating introductions for each of her long-form narrative poems before performing them. Her subjects include family ties, the writing life, oppression, maternity, solidarity, class disparity, and the plight of Black women in America. Both her poems and her commentaries ...

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...