Episodes

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 has said, “A good book should be trouble and delight the reader.” And few do that as well as Kingsolver. ...

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 2020. He has forged a diverse writing career that not only includes award winning books, and publishing in place...

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 Library Foundation—to readers of all ages from across the county. At Literary Arts, our role is to bring...

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 cookbook, Everyone’s Table. Gourdet led a conversation between fellow Portland chef and restauranteur Aaron ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature renowned author, Mary Beard. Probably the most famous classicist in the world, Mary Beard is best known for her international bestsellers SPQR, about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and Women & Power: A Manifesto, a study of ancient and modern attitudes toward female speech. She joined us in the fall of 2023 to talk about her latest book Emperor of Rome, which explores the power of the office of Roman emperor. Given the huge amount that ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we reach back deep into the archive for a lecture by Caryl Phillips from Portland Arts and Lectures in 1999. It’s a fascinating talk about the tragic life of singer and songwriter Marvin Gaye. Caryl Phillips was born on the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts in 1958 and was raised in Leeds, England. His career began in the 1980s British theater and quickly established him as a new and exciting voice. His first novel The Final Passage, published in 1985, was a ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a conversation with Michael Lewis from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Lewis is the author of 17 books of nonfiction including Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short and Flashboys. His books are about unconventional people doing extraordinary things, usually behind the scenes. Lewis joined Portland Book Festival to talk about his new book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. It’s a book abouset Sam Bankman-Fried and the eventual...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we have an event from the 2023 Portland Book Festival featuring two wonderful poets, whose friendship and fandom shines through in their conversation. Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle and host of The Slowdown poetry podcast and newsletter interviews fellow poet Tracy K. Smith about her latest book, To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. To Free the Captives is a personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in Am...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature nonfiction writer David Grann on the release of his new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Grann’s literary journalism combines archival research with in-person interviews and on-the-ground investigation, and it’s said that he’s obsessed with stories and how they are told. Grann has said, “Stories and narratives are always the way I try to make sense of the world. I think that’s why we all tell stories. …I think it’s inter...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature legendary actor, filmmaker, and writer, Tom Hanks. Hanks was joined on stage at the Keller auditorium in May 2023 by fiction and screenwriter Jon Raymond. What’s great about this conversation is that the through line involves Tom Hanks’s longtime make-up artist Danny Stripeke; because in many ways it reveals why Hanks is such an incredible storyteller and a magnetic personality. In the spring of 2023, Hanks had published his second work of fict...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature best-selling, award-winning novelist Ann Patchett, who discusses her latest novel, Tom Lake, with Portland’s own Cheryl Strayed. Ann Patchett is one of our most beloved contemporary authors. She is the author of two children’s books, four books of nonfiction, and nine novels. The New York Times Book Review has said “expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett’s fiction.” She is masterful at portraying specific moments that shed light on universa...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Zadie Smith in conversation with New Yorker staff writer Parul Sehgal from the 2023 Portland Arts & Lectures series. Smith is one of the preeminent fiction writers of our age. She burst onto the stage in the year 2000 with her debut novel, White Teeth. It was a huge bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, and signaled a bold new talent had entered the literary world. Since then, she has published six novels, two collections of stories, and th...

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 posthumous essay collection, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World. Barry Lopez passed away in Dece...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we revisit a lecture from the Multnomah County Library’s 2020 Everybody Reads program featuring Tommy Orange. The 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. His debut novel, T...

This episode features a timely, difficult, yet hopeful conversation featuring journalist Eli Saslow. Saslow lives in Portland and is a writer at large for the New York Times. He travels the country to write in-depth stories about the impact of major national issues on individual lives. He has twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and other honors. He is the author of three books: Voices from the Pandemic, Rising Out of Hatred, and Ten...

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 2020. He has forged a diverse writing career that not only includes award winning books, and publishing in place...

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 Writers in the schools program.  Sabrina Imbler is the author of How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in ...

To close out the celebration of National Poetry Month, this episode features 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 the Sierra Club.    In 2020, she turned to prose with a book of essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of F...

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 librarians and educators who ran individual poetry slams at their schools. As the competitions grew, Literary A...

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 world poets from the deep past. Hirshfield is in conversation with her friend and fellow poet, Major Ja...

April is National Poetry Month, and we are celebrating with a collection of some of our favorite poetry moments over the years at Literary Arts. We will hear from a Portland high school student, the United States poet laureate, an Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient, a Nobel Prize winner, and more.  Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate, speaks at Portland Arts & Lectures in April 2023 about how important reading poetry has been to her in connecting to herself and to the natural world, and how she came...

We’re reaching back into the archive to 2009 to bring you a powerful talk by Karen Armstrong, originally broadcast in 2016.  Armstrong has written 30 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how these faiths shaped world history and drive current events. A former nun, Armstrong wrote her first book, Through the Narrow Gate, about her seven years in a convent, and then later, The Spiral Staircase, about her subsequent spiritual awak...

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...

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 Library Foundation—to readers of all ages from across the county. At Literary Arts, our role is to bring...