The Archive Project

Latest Episodes:

Tobias Wolff (Rebroadcast) Jul 24, 2023

Show notes

This week on The Archive Project, we bring you a lecture from the 2003/2004 season of Portland Arts & Lectures, featuring renowned memoirist and short story writer Tobias Wolff. Best known for his memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, Wolff has also published award-winning fiction, mostly short stories, and in this lecture is discussing his 2003 novel, Old School, which was a finalist for the 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

In his lecture, Wolff explores the balance and conflict between writing memoir and writing fiction, that push and pull between autobiography and imagination, or as he says, “the pressure of the personal life on the imagined life that we write.” It’s a humorous lecture with an inviting mix of personal anecdotes and some more professorial analysis of influences like Leo Tolstoy and Flannery O’Connor–and ideal something-for-everyone kind of talk.

Wolff went on to publish Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories in 2008, and in 2014, Wolff was awarded the Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement from Oregon State University, and in 2015 President Barack Obama presented him with the National Medal of the Arts for his contributions as an author and educator.

“A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.” – Old School

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

Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Better Worlds: A Panel on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Legacy (Rebroadcast) Jul 17, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a discussion on late writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy of pacifism and environmentalism. Our moderator is Theo Downes-Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor. Theo is in conversation with Oregon-based writers Juhea Kim, author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land, a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Michelle Ruiz Keil, author most recently of the young adult novel Summer in the City of Roses, which was a finalist for the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.

In her speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Ursula said: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.”

Juhea Kim and Michelle Ruiz Keil are two of those voices that we need now. In this conversation, Juhea and Michelle discuss how they came—and returned—to Le Guin’s work, her influence on their writing, and how they are carrying her legacy forward, including the responsibility of the artist as a humanitarian.

This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience at Literary Arts on July 15, 2022.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

Michelle Ruiz Keil is an author, playwright, and tarot reader with an eye for the enchanted and way with animals. She is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels All of Us With Wings and Summer In The City of Roses. Her writing for adults can be found most recently in Bitch, Cosmonauts Avenue, and the anthology Dispatches From Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin. She is a 2021 Tin House Scholar and the recipient of residencies from Hedgebrook, The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the Bloedel Reserve. Born in San Francisco, Michelle has lived in Portland, Oregon for many years where she curates the fairytale reading series All Kinds of Fur and lives with her family in a cottage where the forest meets the city.

Juhea Kim is a writer, artist, and advocate based in Portland, Oregon. Her bestselling debut novel Beasts of a Little Land was named a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a Best Book of 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar, Real Simple, Ms., and Portland Monthly. Her writing has been published in Granta, Slice, The Massachusetts Review, Zyzzyva, Guernica, Catapult, Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, Sierra Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor ofPeaceful Dumpling, an online magazine at the intersection of sustainable lifestyle and ecological literature. She has received fellowship support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She earned her BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University.

Amy Bloom & Michael Cunningham (Rebroadcast) Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we reach back to the year 2000 to highlight one of the best conversations about writing found in our archives: A special event with Amy Bloom and Michael Cunningham.

Amy Bloom had just published a collection of stories entitled, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, and Cunningham had published one his most important and bestselling novels, The Hours, just two years earlier. The Hours went on to become a movie that received nine Academy Award nominations and just last year was made into an opera that was performed in Philadelphia and New York, among other cities.

These two old friends are among the best fiction writers at work in this county. At the time of this conversation they were both at the height of their powers, making their talk both intimate and profound. There’s not an ounce of pretension or snobbery between them; they express nothing but humility and respect for the difficulties of writing fiction. In fact, the opening question of the conversation challenges the very the reason their work even exists when Cunningham and Bloom struggle to answer: Why write? They seem to forget that there is an audience of more than 2,000 watching them, as they discuss their art and what it means to them, and what the art form might mean in the larger world.

Find your copies of Amy Bloom & Michael Cunningham’s books through the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

Amy Bloom is the author of four novels: White Houses, Lucky Us, Away, and Love Invents Us; and three collections of short stories: Where the God Of Love Hangs Out, Come to Me (finalist for the National Book Award), and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). Her first book of nonfiction, Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops and Hermaphrodites with Attitudes, is a staple of university sociology and biology courses. Her most recent book is the widely acclaimed New York Times bestselling memoir, In Love. She has written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Elle, The Atlantic, Slate, and Salon, and her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She is the Director of the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Snow Queen, as well as the collection A Wild Swan and Other Tales, and the nonfiction book Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories. The Hours was a New York Times bestseller, and the winner of both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Raised in Los Angeles, Michael Cunningham lives in New York City, and is a senior lecturer at Yale University.

Pickathon 2022: Jon Raymond & Dao Strom, with Anis Mojgani (Rebroadcast) Jul 03, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a conversation from Pickathon 2022. Literary Arts partnered with the Pickathon music festival to program on-stage author readings, and for a live recording of The Archive Project at the Lucky Barn stage. At The Archive Project live, Oregon poet laureate Anis Mojgani led a wide-ranging conversation with Portland-based multidisciplinary writers and artists Dao Strom, author most recently of the music and poetry project Traveler’s Ode/Instrument; and Jon Raymond, author of the recent novel Denial and screenwriter of First Cow and many more projects.

The trio talks about what their processes are like as artists with multiple and often hybrid modes of creativity, how they started as artists and how their genres have changed over the years as they move between music, visual art, filmmaking, fiction, poetry, written versus spoken literary work, and more. It’s interesting to hear how they think about the different pros and cons, as an artist, of more solitary versus collaborative work depending on the kind of art they are making. It’s a wonderfully curious, inquisitive, and open conversation about art and art-making, and we’re grateful to our friends at Pickathon for providing a platform for literary arts at this year’s festival.

Find your copy of Jon, Dao, and Anis’s books through the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

Jon Raymond is the author of the novels The Half-Life, Rain Dragon, and Freebird, and the story collection Livability, winner of the Oregon Book Award. He has collaborated on six films with the director Kelly Reichardt, including Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves, First Cow, and the forthcoming Showing Up, numerous of which have been based on his fiction. He also received an Emmy Award nomination for his screenwriting on the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet. He was the editor of Plazm Magazine, associate and contributing editor at Tin House magazine, and a member of the Board of Directors at Literary Arts. His writing has appeared in Zoetrope, Playboy, Tin House, The Village Voice, Artforum, Bookforum, and other places. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and contemplate the intersection of personal and collective histories. Using practices of polyvocality, fragmentation, and (re)assemblage, Strom writes arrangements of poetry, music, image, song and sound, to be experienced as performance, installation, multimedia, recordings, and inside the spaces of a book. Strom is the author of a bilingual poetry/art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else, (Hanoi: AJAR, 2018), a hybrid-form memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, with song-cycle, East/West, and two books of fiction. She is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital Award and a 2020 Oregon Literary Arts Career Fellowship. She has received support from RACC, Precipice Fund, Oregon Arts Commission, NEA, and others.

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.

Douglas Stuart, in conversation with Omar El Akkad (Rebroadcast) Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Scottish novelist Douglas Stuart, winner of the Booker Prize for his debut novel, Shuggie Bain. He speaks about his new novel, Young Mungo, with Portland-based author and Oregon Book Award winner Omar El Akkad. They discuss the desire and longing at the heart of the story of the love between two working class young men from different religious backgrounds in Glasgow. A highlight is Stuart’s description of how his previous career in the textile industry relates to his work as a writer.

The conversation between Douglas Stuart and Omar El Akkad was recorded in front of a live audience at Powell’s City of Books in Portland on May 5th, 2022. For a complete lineup of Powell’s upcoming in-person and virtual author event programming, please visit them at powells.com/events.

We’ll join Douglas and Omar at the beginning of the event, with a moving introduction from Powell’s employee Nick Yandell.

Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American author. His New York Times-bestselling debut novel Shuggie Bain won the 2020 Booker Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It was the winner of two British Book Awards, including Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, Kirkus Prize, as well as several other literary awards. Stuart’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker and Literary Hub.

Omar El Akkad is an author and a journalist. He has reported from Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and many other locations around the world. His work earned Canada’s National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ, and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, NPR, and Esquire, and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 Novels That Shaped Our World.

Kwame Alexander, in conversation with Gregory Gourdet Jun 19, 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.

Louise Erdrich & Trevino Brings Plenty (rebroadcast) Jun 12, 2023

Show notes

In this episode, we feature a conversation between Louise Erdrich and Portland-based writer Trevino Brings Plenty from the 2021 Portland Book Festival. Louise Erdrich joined us virtually from Minneapolis for an event in front of a live audience at the Newmark Theater. She is on our most celebrated and writers alive. Her novels include The Night Watchman, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, The Round House, which won the National Book Award for Fiction, Love Medicine, and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She joined us on the occasion of the publication of her most recent novel, The Sentence.

Find your copy of Erdrich and Brings Plenty’s books through

the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her most recent book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty is a poet and musician who lives, works, and writes in Portland, OR. Trevino is an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, USA. Some of his work explores the American Indian identity in American culture and how it has through genealogical history affected indigenous peoples in the 21st century. He writes of urban Indian life; it’s his subject. His works include Wakpá Wanáǧi, Ghost River (2015); Real Indian Junk Jewelry (2012); and Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets (2008).

Abdulrazak Gurnah (rebroadcast) Jun 05, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Abdulzarak Gurnah from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in September 2022. He joined us as part of the American launch of his most recent novel Afterlives. He had just won the Nobel prize for literature, after a long and distinguished career as a novelist in Britain, thought he was relatively unknown here in the United States.

In his talk, Gurnah describes the rich layers of cultural influence that formed his native Zanzibar, now known as Tanzania, as an international trading hub through the centuries, and his formative decision to move to England as a young man, a decision that would shape his life and his writing.

Afterlives is a novel set in on the west coast of Africa during World War I that centers the lives of Africans, not their European colonizers, and their struggles to survive the war and then make sense of their lives in its immediate aftermath.

Encountering the work of a writer for the first time can be thrilling. For most readers here in the United States, the Nobel Prize brought to light not only a writer few of us knew, but one that has been writing profound novels about colonialism and migration for decades. Gurnah’s work is both beautiful and important, giving important and fresh perspective on the recent past, and today.

Find your copy of Afterlives through

the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in 1948 and teaches at the University of Kent. He is the author of six novels, including Paradise, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, and By the Sea, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.

Ellen Hagan & Sabina Khan May 27, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a Portland Book Festival event with two prominent young adult novelists whose work appeals to readers of any age.

Ellen Hagan’s novel in verse, Don’t Call Me a Hurricane, explores the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on a New Jersey shore community through the perspective of Eliza, who is fighting to protect her home from development while navigating the lingering trauma of the storm and the climate crisis—plus the additional crisis of having a crush on her should-be enemy, a rich summer tourist.

In Meet Me In Mumbai, Sabina Khan interweaves the stories of Ayesha, who finds herself eighteen years old, far from her home in India, in love for the first time… while pregnant and facing a huge decision. Seventeen years later, Ayesha’s daughter Mira, is searching for information about her history when she finds a box of letters from her birth mother. Mira yearns for more connection to her Indian heritage, but must decide if she’s ready to learn the whole truth about her past.

Both novels feature young characters making big decisions and grappling with the consequences their own choices—as well as the aftermath of the world they are born into—as they find their way. The past is present in both storylines, in ways that ring true for readers of all ages.

Our panel moderator is Portland writer and editor Megan Savage.

Find your copy Ellen and Sabina’s books through

the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. She is the author of Reckless, Glorious, Girl and the co-author with Renée Watson of Watch Us Rise. Her poetry collections include Blooming Fiascoes, Hemisphere, and Crowned. Her work can be found in ESPN Magazine, She Walks in Beauty, and Southern Sin. Ellen is the Director of the Poetry & Theatre Departments at the DreamYard Project and directs their International Poetry Exchange Program with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. She co-leads the Alice Hoffman Young Writer’s Retreat at Adelphi University. Raised in Kentucky, she now lives in New York City with her family.

Sabina Khan is the author of the YA novels Meet Me in Mumbai, Zara Hossain is Here, and The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali. She is an educational consultant and a karaoke enthusiast. After living in Germany, Bangladesh, Macao, Illinois and Texas, she has finally settled down in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, two daughters and the best puppy in the world.

Megan Savage is a multi-genre writer who has taught courses including Creative Writing, Editing & Publishing, and Children’s Literature at Portland Community College since 2008. At PCC, she serves on the Steering Committee for the new Carolyn Moore Writing Residency. She holds an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing and an M.A. in English from Indiana University where she was Fiction Editor of Indiana Review. Her own writing is influenced by themes and images from children’s literature, fairy tales, and folklore, and can be found in such places as the Routledge anthology, Pandemic of Perspectives: Creative Re-Imagining, the More Devotedly podcast, FE: A Fonograf Editions Magazine, and Hunger Mountain #25: Art Saves.

Amor Towles: The Lincoln Highway May 22, 2023

Show notes

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 jumping off point, Towles dives into describing his writing process and how he brings to life the large cast of characters that populate his books, and the complex plots that are so satisfying. There are few writers who talk with such clarity about their own process.

Towles also takes time to dwell in the historic context of the novel, the American mid-century, by talking about the extraordinary life of Carl Fisher, an entrepreneur who, among many other accomplishments, developed the first transcontinental highway (called The Lincoln Highway). Towles showed some slides during the talk so you’ll hear the audience react to some visuals, but you won’t miss anything as he does a wonderful job talking through the images. After his talk, Towles and sat down for an extend conversation.

Find your copy of The Lincoln Highway through

the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.

Amor Towles is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility. His novels have collectively sold millions of copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Towles lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.