Episodes

In this episode of The Archive Project, American Book Award winning poet Martín Espada discusses his then most poetry collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen. In this, his sixth collection, Espada has created a poetic mural. There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the “Mayan astronomer” calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books;...

In this rare, vintage recording from the Literary Arts archive, world-renowned author, poet, and essayist John Updike reads from various poems as well as an essay at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in the fall of 1988. Updike reads from his essay, “Getting the Words Out,” which meditates on his lifelong struggle with stuttering, as well as the nature of speech and communication. With sparkling, self-effacing humor, Updike gives us a doorway into his childhood eccentricities and the ways in whi...

Civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson engages the Portland community in a timely conversation on culture, social justice, and politics. Drawing from his own experiences as an organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson explores the issues of the day and discusses the subtle structures and inherent biases that impact our communities. The conversation examines the core themes of Mckesson’s upcoming first book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, a meditation on resistance, justice...

In this episode, Harvard professor, staff writer at The New Yorker, and New York Times bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses her newest work, These Truths: A History of the United States. Cited as the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—”these truths,” Jefferson called them...

Portland-based journalists and researchers, David Wolman and Julian Smith, discuss their new nonfiction book Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World’s Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West. Aloha Rodeo brings to light the story of how, in 1908, three of Hawaii’s most revered paniolo (cowboys) journeyed 4,000 miles to Wyoming to compete in the world’s greatest rodeo, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and returned home champions and American legends. Wolman and Smith were intervie...

Three contemporary poets—Shayla Lawson, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Jane Wong—share their poetry and discuss their work and inspirations. In 2018, Literary Arts hosted a free reading series called Poets on Broadway, in collaboration with Portland’5 Centers for the Arts, in the Antoinette Hatfield Hall in downtown Portland. This episode features recordings from those events, with Lawson sharing selections from her book of poetry I Think I’m Ready to Meet Frank Ocean, Adams-Santos from Swarm Queen...

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, author of the Lunar Chronicles, presents a new world in the Renegades series. Book two, Archenemies, finds Nova, our heroine, confronted with the possible destruction of Gatlon City and the world as she knows it. In Tochi Onyebuchi’s debut series, Beasts Made of Night, a young...

Israeli writer Amos Oz discusses Israeli Literature, Hebrew as a spoken and written language, the influence of the Holocaust on literature, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I love Israel, even at times that I don’t like it. In fact, I love Israel even at times that I cannot stand it. And Israel, as I’m sure you know, ladies and gentlemen, Israel is neither a country, nor a nation. Actually, it is a fiery collection of arguments. A noisy assembly of 5.6 million citizens, 5.6 million Prime M...

What is my story, and what is not my story? Jacqueline Woodson, acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for children and young adults, broaches this question in her 2019 lecture in Portland, Oregon. A highly personable and conversational Woodson discusses how her passion for writing began and grew from a young age. Through recollections from her own life and stories from her family’s history, she shares how her past has shaped her writing craft and career. Woodson recites exc...

In this episode of The Archive Project, former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses the past, present, and future state of the world in the context of climate change. He supports his argument for the need for societal and policy change with extensive scientific research and discusses the merits of various alternative energy resources. He focuses the latter half of his lecture on emphasizing the need to prepare and assist the next generation with the climate challenges ahea...

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...

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, we celebrate Portland’s creative youth during the seventh 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 competing for poetic glory. Verselandia! is the Grand Slam for the winners from individual school slams hosted by public high school library media specialists. This...

In this episode, we honor two-time United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner W.S. Merwin. In November of 2008, Merwin joined Literary Arts downtown in the Newmark Theatre for an intimate Q&A session, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration. The collection features a combination of new poems and selected favorites from the course of his lengthy and prolific career. In a New York Times review of the book, Don Chiasson wrote that Merwin’s po...

In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan joins us in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for a lecture on the journey to her New York Times best seller Manhattan Beach. In her own words, Egan takes us through her research process for the novel—from the initial spark of intrigue and inspiration, through the many stories she uncovered along the way, and finally to the relationships she was able to foster and channel into the final product. About the book: Manhattan Beach (2017) ...

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single micro-interview at Portland Book Festival 2018, in partnership with The Believer magazine. The first featurette puts The Believer’s Sara Ortiz in conversation with Tommy Orange, author of critically acclaimed debut novel There There, which follows the struggles of Oakland Indians as their lives converge at a local powwow. In the second micro-interview, moderated by local artist Jonathan H...

Ron Chernow opens his talk with a discussion on being a biographer—from the perils of picking a subject to debates about how much one should reveal about that subject. Specifically, he discusses his research on the life of John D. Rockefeller for his book Titan (1998) and how it is not unusual when writing a biography to encounter “somebody I had not met in any of the earlier biographies. Here was a man with a beautiful, dry Midwestern wit; somebody with an inexhaustible fund of droll stories; s...

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single event during Lit Crawl Portland 2018. 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. The first segment features a reading titled “Our Voices are a Bridge” cohosted by The Rumpus, VIDA...

In this episode of The Archive Project, American Book Award winning poet Martín Espada discusses his then most poetry collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen. In this, his sixth collection, Espada has created a poetic mural. There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the “Mayan astronomer” calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books;...

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 ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, Mary Oliver reads poems from several of her collections, focusing on brief images of the natural world that she believes people need to attend. These poems include “Messenger,” “Thirst,” “Percy 1,” “The Swan,” “Beans,” “Swimming with Otter,” “Wild Geese,” “Percy 2,” “There you were and it was like spring,” and “The Sun.” Between poems, Oliver shares details about her personal life, including her time as a teacher and her time spent observing the world with...

This episode of The Archive Project features bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist Barbara Kingsolver discussing her then most recent novel Flight Behavior. The novel is a heady exploration of climate change, along with media exploitation and political opportunism that lie at the root of what may be our most urgent modern dilemma. Set in Appalachia, a region to which Kingsolver has returned often in both her acclaimed fiction and nonfiction, its suspenseful narrative traces the unforeseen imp...

In this rare, vintage recording from the Literary Arts archive, world-renowned author, poet, and essayist John Updike reads from various poems as well as an essay at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in the fall of 1988. Updike reads from his essay, “Getting the Words Out,” which meditates on his lifelong struggle with stuttering, as well as the nature of speech and communication. With sparkling, self-effacing humor, Updike gives us a doorway into his childhood eccentricities and the ways in whi...

Women who find themselves confined to wild places, trapped in a cell, by circumstance, by lack of means, by animals and men; and haunted by the past and present alike. The short stories in Lauren Groff’s Florida are set in a landscape of physical and environmental dangers, where panthers and snakes lie in wait and hurricanes brew; while personal crises of sex, loneliness, and rage threaten her characters. Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room is the story of a woman serving two consecutive life sentenc...