Episodes

This week we have a conversation featuring Naomi Alderman, who joined us for Portland Book Festival in November 2023 for the very first event for her new novel, The Future. Alderman is the author of the mega best-seller, Barack Obama-endorsed, Margaret Atwood-mentored novel The Power. She talks with interviewer Omar El Akkad about the pressure she felt writing this follow-up, about a handful of friends who plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech billionaires who are threatening it. B...

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...

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 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 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 A...

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 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 Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation with author Tommy Orange from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Viet Than Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his debut novel The Sympathizer, which sold more than one million copies worldwide, catapulted him to national fame. Since then, Nguyen has gone on to publish two more books of fiction, and a work of nonfiction, Nothing Ever dies. He joined us for the Festival on the occasion of the publication of ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we explore storytelling and the intersections between literature and music with our friends at the Oregon Symphony and 45th Parallel Universe. First, we have a conversation led by Oregon Symphony creative chair Gabriel Kahane. As part of the 2023 Portland Book Festival, Kahane spoke with one of his frequent collaborators, the poet Matthew Zapruder. The conversation centers on Zapruder’s new memoir, Story of a Poem, a beautiful book that is, indeed, the st...

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 feature a talk by Amor Towles from a Literary Arts special event on February 1, 2023. Towles is the author of three novels including the huge, international bestseller, A Gentleman in Moscow. He joined us to talk about his latest work The Lincoln Highway, also a bestselling novel, which began for Towles a full twenty years before its publication with a simple initial image: A warden driving a young man home for a juvenile detention center. From this ju...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Leslie Marmon Silko in conversation with Molly Gloss from a special event in 2010, at Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall. While Leslie Marmon Silko had begun to publish poems and short stories in the 1960s, it was her iconic and ground-breaking novel, Ceremony, published in 1978, that established her as one our greatest living writers. Since then, Silko has gone on to publish widely and across genres with a distinct voice, deeply rooted i...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul from a visit he made to Portland, Oregon in 1991. The storied career of Naipaul spans more than a half century. In his lifetime, he was compared to Conrad, Dickens, and Tolstoy. Born in Trinidad to an Indo-Trinidadian family, he lived a peripatetic life, travelling the world constantly, though ultimately based in England. He often stirred controversy with strong opinions, and was sometimes accused of being an apologi...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we take you behind the scenes at the 2023 Portland Book Festival, which we hosted in downtown Portland on November 4, 2023. The festival featured over 100 writers in more than 50 events throughout the day. One of the best things about book festivals is the magic of having that particular group of authors all together at the same place at the same time. It might be the only time some of them are at the same event. This makes for great on-stage conversation...

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. ...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we’re reaching back into the archive to 2020, to a virtual conversation with Colson Whitehead from Portland Arts & Lectures. It was, in fact, our very first virtual event of the pandemic and while we are so glad to be back live, it is fascinating to hear again from that time period. We’ve chosen to broadcast this conversation now because Whitehead has just published a new novel called Crook Manifesto. There are few writers who are both as versatile and ac...

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 about Sam Bankman-Fried and the eventual c...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Zadie Smith in conversation with New Yorker staff writer Parul Sehgal. 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 three collections of essays in addition to dozen...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we share a conversation about something you probably never think about, unless you think about it all of the time: disabled parenting. We’ll hear from Eliza Hull, a contemporary musician, disability advocate, and writer based in regional Victoria, Australia, and the editor of a new anthology, We’ve Got This: Essays By Disabled Parents, which features stories from parents who identify as Deaf, disabled, neurodiverse, or chronically ill. Eliza is joined by o...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature one of the highlights of the 2022 Portland Book Festival. It’s a conversation between two of our most accomplished fiction writers, George Saunders and Jess Walter. Their conversation is by turns hilarious, caustic, tender, and profound. Our interviewer for the event was OPB’s own Geoff Norcross, who does his usual masterful job moderating. Find your copy of Saunders and Walter’s books through the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG. George Sa...

This week’s episode of The Archive Project features a conversation from the 2022 Portland Book Festival. Portland-born writer Mitchell S. Jackson interviewed Leila Mottley about her debut novel, Nightcrawling. Jackson is the author of the novel The Residue Years and the nonfiction book Survival Math. He is the winner of a Whiting Award and he received the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for his piece on Ahmaud Arbery. Leila Mottley is the former youth poet laureate of Oakland, California. Nig...

In this episode of The Archive Project, we bring you an event from the 2022 Portland Book Festival, which took place on Saturday, November 5, 2022. The hour is split into two halves of thematically related conversations. Up first, OPB’s Tiffany Camhi interviews writer Melissa Febos about her essay collection, Girlhood; in the second half of the show, OPB’s Jenn Chavez speaks with music critic and New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu about his memoir, Stay True. We paired Melissa and Hua for this fest...

This week’s episode of The Archive Project features Reza Aslan discussing his new book, An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville. Aslan was interviewed by Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor at the 2022 Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America, which took place on Saturday, November 5 in downtown Portland. Iran has been in the news this fall for a new wave of protests in reaction to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was a...

We’re thrilled to welcome Barbara Kingsolver back to Portland on Tuesday, October 17 at the Keller Auditorium. She’ll share her newest novel, DEMON COPPERHEAD, and be joined in conversation with author Jess Walter. More info here. This episode of The Archive Project features Barbara Kingsolver in an interview with Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor, as part of the 2012-13 season of Portland Arts & Lectures. The occasion for Kingsolver’s visit was the publication of a long-awaited no...