Episodes

In this Long Distance conversation, bestselling author and independent bookstore owner Emma Straub speaks with Literary Arts’ Amanda Bullock about her recently released novel, All Adults Here. The book is a warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family–as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes. In their discussion, Straub and Bullock talk about world-building in realist fiction, how contemporary ...

Three months after the catastrophic earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat begins her lecture with a proverb from the country she grew up in: “We remember, but we move forward.” She mentions Haiti’s nickname, terre glissée or “slippery ground,” and expounds on the metaphoric and literal connotations of that phrase. With the devastation still on everyone’s mind, Danticat tells of both her own and her family’s experiences during and after the earthquake, mentioning ...

Julia Alvarez reflects on her dual childhood in the Dominican Republic and in the United States: living in a world under the hand of a dictator; her poor performance in school but robust and diverse education at home; her difficult time adjusting to immigrant life and the prejudice she faced; the sixth grade teacher who showed her the world that existed within books; and her realization that 1) intelligence comes in many forms and 2) imagination can save you. “One thing that hasn’t changed is m...

The 2020 Oregon Book Awards ceremony was originally scheduled on April 27, 2020 as a live event. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, our 33rd annual ceremony was reimagined into this special, state-wide broadcast and podcast episode, with special thanks to our partners at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Since 1997, the Oregon Book Awards have celebrated the work of our state’s authors. This year, 215 books from 44 towns across Oregon were submitted. Out-of-state judges determined the fin...

In this episode of Long Distance from The Archive Project, debut novelist Jean Kyoung Frazier talks with Amanda Bullock about Pizza Girl. Set in Los Angeles, the eponymous Pizza Girl is a pregnant 18-year-old who falls into obsession with an older woman for whom she delivers pizza. In this discussion, Frazier talks about her writing practice, including some surprising real-life inspirations for this sharp, funny book. She explores Los Angeles as the book’s setting and wonders at how distance fro...

Toni Morrison begins her lecture by saying she wants to discuss two of her books in particular—Beloved (1987) and Jazz (still forthcoming at the time)—and the progression of her writing. She considers the impact of history on both novels. In discussing Beloved, Morrison touches on the pornography of writing about violence as a voyeur and how she worked to keep the focus on the characters themselves, not the institution of slavery. For Jazz, Morrison discusses the genre’s contradictions, its pla...

This episode of Long Distance, Literary Arts’ new podcast series, features an interview with author Megha Majumdar whose debut novel, A Burning, was recently released. A Burning features three protagonists all connected by a terrorist incident involving a train bombing in India. Jivan, a young Muslim woman, witnesses the incident, and creates a social media post asking “If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the governmen...

This episode of The Archive Project features a lecture from Tommy Orange in Portland, Oregon. This lecture was the culminating event of the Multnomah County Library’s 2020 Everybody Reads program—an annual shared reading experience that includes city-wide events for readers of all ages. In his lecture, Orange details his experience as a Native American growing up and working in Oakland, California. He didn’t always want to be a writer, and he shares the twisting path that led him to this work. H...

This episode of The Archive Project, features a panel discussion between authors Casey Cep, Lara Prescott, and moderator Pamela Paul of The New York Times, from the 2019 Portland Book Festival. Cep and Prescott are both New York Times best selling debut authors who have drawn inspiration from famous figures in literary history. Cep’s nonfiction book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, explores the true-life murder trial that inspired Harper Lee to research and write ...

This first episode of Long Distance, Literary Arts’ new podcast series, features an interview with author Kristen Arnett whose debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, was recently released in paperback by Tin House Books. In her conversation with Literary Arts’ Amanda Bullock, Arnett dives into the novel’s inspiration, including family dynamics and her obsession and deep research into taxidermy. They also discuss Florida, where the novel is set; what it means to be a “funny person;” and the books in wh...

In this episode of The Archive Project, poet Eavan Boland reads a selection of her poetry and prose, pausing between pieces to discuss how each particular work originated and her writing process. The topics of her work include history vs. the past and love vs. loss (most often as these topics relate to Ireland), and she weaves Greek and Roman mythology into many of her poems. At the end of her reading, she answers a series of questions from the audience. “I grew up in a time in Ireland when Iri...

In March 2019, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joined thousands of book-lovers for the culminating lecture of the Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program. Starting in January, readers across the county took part in reading and discussing Adichie’s novel Americanah and her book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists. In this episode, Adichie discusses her journey as a writer—from her earliest memories in her hometown of Nsukka, Nigeria to her American college experiences and beyond. Througho...

In this episode of The Archive Project, playwright Terrence McNally traces the arc of his career with humor and passion—from a boyhood in New York and Texas, the special influence of a high school English teacher, mentorship by Elaine May—to the peaks (and valleys) of a career that spanned five decades. McNally explores what it is that ignites a person’s interest in the arts, and how crucial it is to have teachers/mentors/family members encourage and nurture that interest, especially in children...

This episode features an event from the 2019 Portland Book Festival called Dangerous Love: Desire & Obsession. The event’s panel includes some of the greatest poets at work today: Diannely Antigua, Jericho Brown, Malcolm Tariq, and was moderated by Erika Stevens. The conversation explores what poetry is, what it can do, and who it is for. Through their writings, these poets engage with our most urgent issues and speak powerfully about an individual experience of race, class, power, sexual orien...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Malcolm Gladwell joins Literary Arts executive director, Andrew Proctor, for an onstage discussion at the 2019 Portland Book Festival. Gladwell shares his latest book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, which is a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong. As a writer, Gladwell is interested in exploring the hidden, counterintuitive stories and the unseen forces that shape our...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Amor Towles discusses his celebrated second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, in front of a live audience in Portland, Oregon. In the talk, Towles shares the creative origins of the novel and treats the listener to a lively lesson on Russian history and, in particular, the history of the landmark Metropol Hotel. A Gentleman in Moscow begins in 1922, when Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to hou...

Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Book Award-winning author of bestselling nonfiction titles Between the World and Me, The Beautiful Struggle, and We Were Eight Years in Power, shares from and discusses his debut novel, The Water Dancer, with fellow writer Renée Watson. The Water Dancer explores the story of Hiram Walker, a gifted young man born into bondage on a plantation in the American South. In this discussion, recorded in front of a live audience in Portland, Oregon, Coates speaks about America’s...

In this episode, The Atlantic staff writer George Packer discusses his recent biography, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. Richard Holbrooke, a diplomat and activist who served under numerous American presidents, has been described as a brilliant, utterly self-absorbed almost-great man who possessed almost inhumane energy and appetites. In this lecture, Packer details his process of writing the biography and provides the audience with insights into this complicated ...

This episode of The Archive Project features a conversation recorded live at the Keller Auditorium in Portland, Oregon between Margaret Atwood, acclaimed novelist, poet, literary critic, and activist, and Omar El Akkad. Atwood visited Portland to celebrate the publication of The Testaments, the sequel to her acclaimed dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which was originally published in 1985. Their conversation spans the length of Atwood’s remarkable career, her diverse range of works, and why ...

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each from events that took place during Lit Crawl Portland on November 8, 2019. 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 and surprising mash-ups. The episode opens with an impassioned spoken word poem written...

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...

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 of The Archive Project features an onstage conversation from the 2019 Portland Book Festival between Portland-based authors Rene Denfeld and Phillip Margolin, with moderator Amy Stewart. As writers, Denfeld and Margolin each pull from their own personal and professional experiences to craft high-octane thrillers that are as detailed and insightful as they are compelling and bingeable. Though there are many similarities between the two, including their chosen form, genre, and the fac...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we share the late V. S. Naipaul’s 1991 event in Portland, Oregon. Naipaul visited Portland on the occasion of the publication of India: A Million Mutinies Now. The book was the third installment of travelogues about his ancestral India, at a time when the nation was in the midst of a massive transformation. Naipaul, who refers to the book as “an exploration of an old civilization through the experiences of the people who live in it,” introduces the listene...