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    Arts

    The Archive Project

    In partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Literary Arts is building a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world’s best writers over the first 40 years of Portland Arts & Lectures in Portland.

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    Latest Episodes:
    Barbara Kingsolver (Rebroadcast) Oct 02, 2023
    Show notes
    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 novel, Flight Behavior. Kingsolver is perhaps best known for her novel The Poisonwood Bible which many critics and readers consider a masterpiece.

    In this interview, Kingsolver discusses her most recent book, but also looks back at previous book and her craft over the span of her career, and how it relates to the political or social issues that are her themes. Kingsolver is a writer who embraces so called “political art” and who rejects the idea that it, by definition, it is a lesser form. This “divorce”, as she calls it in this conversation, between art and the issues, is artificial and distinctly American. And it’s a divorce that can leave American artists dangerously on the sidelines of some of the most important political and social arguments of the day.

    Find your copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.


    Kwame Alexander, in conversation with Gregory Gourdet (Rebroadcast) Sep 25, 2023
    Show notes

    On this episode of The Archive Project, we feature multi-genre bestselling poet and author of thirty-eight books, Kwame Alexander, who discusses his memoir Why Fathers Cry at Night with James Beard award-winning chef of Portland’s Kann, and author of the cookbook Everybody’s Table, Gregory Gourdet. Their conversation was recorded at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland.

    Alexander is best-known for his children’s books, including The Door of No Return and The Crossover, which was recently made into a TV series. Last month he published a memoir, Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances. Alexander said that he started the book as love poems for his daughters, not knowing it would become the memoir and a mix of poetry, prose, recipes, and more as he explored his past and his present.

    The conversation is remarkably open and honest, as Alexander shares stories ranging from learning to cook his mother’s fried chicken—an especially challenging project while living in buttermilk-less London—in order to connect not only with his late mother but with his daughter; growing up with a strict, book-loving father and how that affected his relationship to books and literature; and actively working to become a better father, partner, and friend by pushing himself to be more vulnerable with the people in his life. Although the word “father” is in the title, the book and the conversation touch on all kinds of friend and family relationships, beyond father-child.

    Find your copy Kwame and Gregory’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Kwame Alexander is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books, including his Newbery Medal-winning novel The Crossover and The Undefeated, winner of the Caldecott Medal and Newbery Honor. He is the founding editor of Versify, which aims to change the world one word at a time.

    Gregory Gourdet is a celebrated chef, best-selling author, and television personality. He is best known for his award-winning cuisine, bevy of TV appearances, and trendsetting role in the culinary boom of Portland. Gregory ran the kitchen at Portland’s Departure Restaurant + Lounge for 10 years, leaving in 2019 to focus on opening Kann. He was named “Chef of the Year” by both Eater Portland and the Oregon Department of Agriculture, and is a James Beard Award nominee and two-time Bravo Top Chef finalist. In 2021, Gregory released his first cookbook, Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, which was a national bestseller and won the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook.


    Edwidge Danticat, 2022 (Rebroadcast) Sep 18, 2023
    Show notes

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a talk from Edwidge Danticat from Portland Arts & Lectures on May 12, 2022.

    Danticat became nationally recognized with her debut novel published in 1994 Breath, Eyes, Memory which was an Oprah Book Club selection and national bestseller. Since then, she has gone on to publish more than a dozen books in multiple genres—novels, short fiction, memoir, literary criticism, young adult, and children’s books—many which were bestsellers including the Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, and Claire of the Sea of Light.

    In her talk, Danticat gives an intimate picture of her life, from her childhood in Haiti to her immigration as a young adult to Brooklyn. The talk is structured around her mother’s diagnosis and treatment of cancer. It explores Danticat’s life growing up in an extended family in two countries and the beauty and struggles this life brought her. She offers us a portrait of Haitian culture that reveals it beauty, joy and strength rather than centering the tragedies that nation has suffered as is so often the case. In all, this an inspirational talk about intergenerational and international families, migration, and holding multiple cultures within oneself. It gives a deeper understanding of Danticat as a writer, and sheds important light on a culture often misunderstood here in the United States.

    Find your copy Danticat’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist; Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times Notable Book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; and Krik? Krak!, also a National Book Award finalist. A 2018 Neustadt International Prize for Literature winner and the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere.


    Storytelling for Change: Kiese Laymon & Imbolo Mbue (Rebroadcast) Sep 11, 2023
    Show notes

    On this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a conversation between Kiese Laymon and Imbolo Mbue on storytelling, environmental racism, and activism, recorded at the 2023 AWP Conference in Seattle, Washington.

    Set in a fictional African village being polluted by an oil company, Imbolo Mbue’s latest novel, How Beautiful We Were, confronts environmental devastation, corporate colonialism and activism. Kiese Laymon, author of the memoir Heavy, has multigenerational roots in Mississippi have led him to consider climate justice and the ways that extractive agriculture, corporate interests, and the legacy of slavery impact communities of color in the US.

    Find your copy Kiese and Imbolo’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. He is the founder of “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their on their own terms, in their own communities. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.

    Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries. Her second novel, How Beautiful We Were, about a fictional African village’s fight against an against American oil company, was named by the New York Times as “One of the 10 Best Books” of 2021. Her works have been translated into eighteen languages and published in dozens of countries. A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Mbue lives in New York.


    Verselandia! 2022 (Rebroadcast) Sep 04, 2023
    Show notes

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature some of the incredible slam poets who performed as part of Verselandia!—the annual, city-wide youth poetry slam championship event, presented by Literary Arts—in 2022.

    Each year, youth spend months writing and competing in slams on high school campuses across the city. Then, each April, about twenty student finalists compete for the title of city-wide Portland slam champ.

    What is important about this episode is that these young poets are thrilling to hear. They will give you the chills, make you laugh, and perhaps bring tears to your eyes. And what’s more, 2022 was the first time we’d been able to present the competition live since 2019, and it was an especially emotional evening. So, at this moment when it feels our society is cleaved with deep divisions—race, geography, economics and age—it is so important to take the time to really listen to young voices, who are, after all the future. These young writers come from all walks of life in Portland, and have incredible stories to tell.

    Content note: Some of these poems contain explicit language and mature content, which may not be suitable for all audiences.

    Anis Mojgani is Oregon’s current Poet Laureate and the author of five books of poetry. His work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in journals Bat City Review, Rattle, Buzzfeed Reader, Thrush, and Forklift Ohio, amongst others. A two time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis has done commissioned work for the Getty Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Portland Timbers, and has been awarded artist residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, AIR Serenbe, and the Bloedel Nature Reserve. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Portland, OR, where he serves on the Board of Directors for Literary Arts. His latest collection is In the Pockets of Small Gods.


    Ann Patchett (Rebroadcast) Aug 28, 2023
    Show notes
    Join us in welcoming Ann Patchett back to Portland on Thursday, September 7 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. She’ll share her newest novel, TOM LAKE, and will be in conversation with writer Cheryl Strayed. Find more info and tickets here.

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we hear from beloved, best-selling novelist, essayist, and bookstore owner Ann Patchett. The talk in this episode is from her appearance at Portland Arts & Lectures in 2013. Patchett joined us on the publication of a collection of essays titled This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.

    This talk is powerful because, while her devotion to craft and exceptional talent is clear from her many award-winning novels, we learn that her writing life is also one filled with false starts, detours, happy accidents, and acts of generosity. It is also consumed, at least in the first part of her career, with the practical need to make a living, and the compromises and survival techniques required to do so. And so, she tells the story of her life as a writer with a wry sense of humor, sharp insight, and refreshingly practical attitude.

    “Well, what it turned out the story of my happy marriage was, was the never ending history of divorce in my family. Everyone in my family for as far as the eye can see, in any direction, has been divorced. And when I sat down to write about marriage, it was really fascinating to realize that everything I know about marriage comes from divorce, and that divorce is the bedrock of my marriage.” —Ann Patchett

    Find your copy of Ann Patchett’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Ann Patchett is the author of novels, works of nonfiction, and children’s books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women’s Prize in the U.K., and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. TIME magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.


    Hanif Abdurraqib, Kaveh Akbar, & Leslie Jamison with Alano Club of Portland (Rebroadcast) Aug 21, 2023
    Show notes

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we are celebrating the kickoff of National Poetry Month with a special event, recorded in front of a live audience at Literary Arts event space in downtown Portland on September 17, 2022. This event was part of a partnership with the Alano Club of Portland and their Artists in Recovery series, about the intersections of mental health and substance use recovery, creativity, and building community. Learn more at PortlandAlano.org.

    Alano Club director of development and community engagement Kasey Anderson emceed an evening with writers Leslie Jamison, Kaveh Akbar, and Hanif Abdurraqib, who shared recent and brand-new work with the audience, a multi-genre mix of prose and poetry. As they share their own work, talk about each other’s work and their relationship to Alano Club, it’s clear from the fact that they felt comfortable enough to share brand-new writing that these three writers deeply admire and respect each other.

    Many of our episodes feature writers in conversation, but this week we have a trio of readings for you. First, we’ll hear from Kasey Anderson, of the Alano Club, and our first writer of the evening is Leslie Jamison, award-winning essayist and author of The Empathy Exams, reads from her memoir The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, as well a new work-in-progress.

    Then Kaveh Akbar reads from his most recent book of poetry, Pilgrim Bell, and a novel-in-progress.

    We also hear from poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America, his most recent poetry collection is A Fortune for Your Disaster. Abdurraqib reads from his poetry and a nonfiction project to close out the event.

    A quick note: This conversation touches on mature themes of subsctance abuse and recovery that may not be suitable for all listeners.

    Find your copy of Hanif, Kaveh, and Leslie’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.


    Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His most recent book, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much , was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us was named a book of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist, and longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune for Your Disaster, won the Lenore Marshall Prize. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

    Kaveh Akbar is the author of Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, and has received honors such as a Levis Reading Prize and multiple Pushcart Prizes. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in low-residency programs at Warren Wilson and Randolph Colleges.

    Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams. Her essays have appeared in the Believer, Harper’s, Oxford American, A Public Space, Tin House, and The Best American Essays. She is a regular columnist for the New York Times Book Review and lives in Brooklyn, New York.


    Jane Smiley, 1991 (Rebroadcast) Aug 14, 2023
    Show notes

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we’re reaching back more than 30 years into the archive to feature the prolific novelist Jane Smiley from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in 1991. This period was an inflection point in her career. At that time, she had established herself as an important and respected American writer, but had yet to find a large audience—to this day, many believe The Greenlanders, published just three years before this talk in 1988, to be a significantly underappreciated novel. Just six months after this talk, Smiley would published her breakout novel A Thousand Acres and would win the 1992 Pulitzer Prize which catapulted her to literary fame.

    The title of the talk is, provocatively, “Can Mother’s Think?” The irony here, of course, is that Smiley is both a brilliant artist and a mother. But as a young writer she could not find literature that rendered the experience of motherhood with the depth, nuance, and power she felt it deserved. She discusses the paternal nature of the books that dominate the so-called canon, the relationship of feminism to motherhood, and challenges the notion of unconditional love, a notion that she believes contributed to the dearth of complex mothers in literature. She also talks about a crop of new writers emerging at the time who were changing the very definition of literature by writing about motherhood in new and profound ways.

    Find your copy of Jane Smiley’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the Last Hundred Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is the author as well of several works of nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.


    Patrick Radden Keefe (Rebroadcast) Aug 07, 2023
    Show notes

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature journalist Patrick Radden Keefe from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in February 2023. Keefe is the author of five books of nonfiction, most recently Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Rebels, and Crooks, a collection of essays from his work as a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. NPR called Rogues “a wonderful book, not only because Keefe’s prose is masterful, but because he has a preternatural gift for reading people. He recognizes that we’re all unreliable narrators of our own lives, and writes about his subjects with a keen sense of understanding.”

    He is also the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Mystery in Northern Ireland, as well as Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.

    In this talk, Keefe speaks to his writing process of what his editor termed “investigative melodrama.” He is drawn in by fascinating real-life characters like Arthur Sackler of Empire of Pain and Dolours Price of Say Nothing as way to explore, as he says, “the arbitrary lines we draw between what’s legal and illegal, what society sanctions and celebrates and what it condemns and punishes.”

    We’re including the full event intro and Q&A in this extended version of this episode, since many subscribers couldn’t make it to the concert hall due to the extraordinary weather–Portland experienced an unexpected and historic, record-setting snowstorm the evening of the event.

    As a special feature, we start the episode with a short reading from Oregon-based writer, Stephan Nance. Nance was awarded the Edna L. Holmes Fellowship in Young Readers from Literary Arts in 2023. Their reading is a selection from their Young Adult novel-in-progress, A Bird in the Heart, which they describe as a “very birdy young adult novel set in Eastern Oregon”.

    Find your copy of Patrick Radden Keefe’s books through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the decade by Entertainment Weekly. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change.


    Lauren Groff (Rebroadcast) Jul 31, 2023
    Show notes

    In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Lauren Groff from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in early 2023 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Groff is the author of six books of fiction, the last three of which, Fates and Furies, Florida, and Matrix were all national bestsellers and all finalists for the National Book Award.

    One of the many delights in reading Groff’s books is the dramatic shift in time, place, and focus from title to title. She is not an artist writing the same book over and over. From a multi-century saga of a town and its secrets, to a boy at a hippie commune in upstate New York, to look at a modern Greek tragedy, to the wild country that is the state of Florida, and life in a medieval nunnery during the twelfth century–every time you pick up one of her books you are transported. It’s thrilling as a reader, and it speaks to Groff’s immense talent that there are thematic through-lines moving across such a diverse body of work.

    In her talk, Groff reveals the deeper undercurrents of her work and her unusual process of writing. While she professes to be “profoundly secular,” the core of her talk revolves around God, poetry, love and sexuality. She weaves in discussion of the biblical Song of Solomon, to her own biography and her spiritual journey, and the universal themes found in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. She manages to do all this with an incredible sense of humor and a light touch which feels, like her fiction, somehow slightly magical.

    Find your copy of Matrix through
    the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

    Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels and two short story collections. Her 2021 novel Matrix, which Esquire described as “Incandescent… a radiant work of imagination and accomplishment,” was a National Book Award finalist and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year. Her works have won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, and France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne. Groff is a three-time finalist for the National Book Award and twice for the Kirkus Prize, and has been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Prize, the Southern Book Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Prize. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband and two sons.


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