The Archive Project

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Malcolm Gladwell: Talking to Strangers Dec 11, 2019

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, Malcolm Gladwell joins Literary Arts executive director, Andrew Proctor, for an onstage discussion at the 2019 Portland Book Festival. Gladwell shares his latest book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, which is a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong. As a writer, Gladwell is interested in exploring the hidden, counterintuitive stories and the unseen forces that shape our choices, our lives, and who we are. In this discussion, he dives deeper into the risks it takes to engage with some of the most contentious issues of our time, and how we approach the tough moments.

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers–The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy‘s Top Global Thinkers. His latest book is Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know.

Amor Towles Dec 04, 2019

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, Amor Towles discusses his celebrated second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, in front of a live audience in Portland, Oregon. In the talk, Towles shares the creative origins of the novel and treats the listener to a lively lesson on Russian history and, in particular, the history of the landmark Metropol Hotel. A Gentleman in Moscow begins in 1922, when Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. It is at once a romance, a socioeconomic commentary, a history of Russia from the Bolshevik Revolution to the Cold War, a rumination on the meaning of family and home, and an exploration of the power of literature.

Born and raised in the Boston area, Amor Towles graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University. His first novel, Rules of Civility, published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller and was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011. His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, published in 2016, was also a New York Times bestseller and was named as one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. His work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Having worked as an investment professional for more than twenty years, Mr. Towles now devotes himself full time to writing in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Renée Watson Dec 04, 2019

Show notes

Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Book Award-winning author of bestselling nonfiction titles Between the World and Me, The Beautiful Struggle, and We Were Eight Years in Power, shares from and discusses his debut novel, The Water Dancer, with fellow writer Renée Watson. The Water Dancer explores the story of Hiram Walker, a gifted young man born into bondage on a plantation in the American South. In this discussion, recorded in front of a live audience in Portland, Oregon, Coates speaks about America’s cultural history and its role in our current sociopolitical climate, as well as his own career and his process of writing this book.

“I don’t want to bear witness to art that is solicitous of me. I come to art to see the person express something that’s deep, deep inside and being pulled out and rendered in some kind of beautiful fashion. And so, the first thing I would say [to young, aspiring writers] is write for yourselves.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a distinguished writer in residence at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is the author of the bestselling books The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and Between the World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. Ta-Nehisi is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He is also the current author of the Marvel comics The Black Panther and Captain America. The Water Dancer is his first novel.

Renée Watson is the New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author of the novels Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, and two picture books: Harlem’s Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Renée is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts. She lives in New York City.

George Packer Nov 21, 2019

Show notes

In this episode, The Atlantic staff writer George Packer discusses his recent biography, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. Richard Holbrooke, a diplomat and activist who served under numerous American presidents, has been described as a brilliant, utterly self-absorbed almost-great man who possessed almost inhumane energy and appetites. In this lecture, Packer details his process of writing the biography and provides the audience with insights into this complicated and contradictory man’s life while more broadly exploring the nature of power and the lives of those who hold it. It’s a keen look at the arc of our country’s recent political history that sheds important light on where we find ourselves today.

“The more I thought about it, the more I realized: This is what I need. I need to write a book that doesn’t sound like a biography. I need to write a book that sounds like a novel… I thought of this book like a yarn, like a long night’s yarn in which you sit down with the narrator and he tells you the story of Holbrooke.” — George Packer

George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, which was a New York Times best seller and winner of the 2013 National Book Award. His other nonfiction books include The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, and Blood of the Liberals, winner of the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He is also the author of two novels and a play, Betrayed, winner of the 2008 Lucille Lortel Award, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell.

Margaret Atwood in conversation with Omar El Akkad Nov 18, 2019

Show notes

This episode of The Archive Project features a conversation recorded live at the Keller Auditorium in Portland, Oregon between Margaret Atwood, acclaimed novelist, poet, literary critic, and activist, and Omar El Akkad. Atwood visited Portland to celebrate the publication of The Testaments, the sequel to her acclaimed dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which was originally published in 1985. Their conversation spans the length of Atwood’s remarkable career, her diverse range of works, and why she has returned to her seminal story, 34 years later.

“It annoys me when people say ‘it could never happen here’. There’s no such thing. ‘It’ could always happen ‘here’, wherever ‘here’ is, given the circumstances.” — Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; The Year of the Flood; and MaddAddam. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, and lives in Toronto.

Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Doha, Qatar until he moved to Canada with his family. He is an award-winning journalist and author who has traveled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantànamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. He is a recipient of Canada’s National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. His debut novel is American War, for which he won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Lauren Groff & Rachel Kushner (Rebroadcast) Nov 07, 2019

Show notes

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 sentences in prison, whose thoughts are occupied by the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, and whose days are defined by the women around her all hustling to survive the institution. Moderated by John Freeman, editor of Freeman’s anthology.

Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and the celebrated short story collection Delicate Edible Birds. She has won the PEN/O. Henry Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, along with several Best American Short Stories anthologies, and she was named one of Granta‘s 2017 Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and sons.

Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2013. Her first novel, Telex from Cuba was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent novel is The Mars Room. She lives in Los Angeles.

John Freeman is an American writer and literary critic. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s, a literary biannual, and author of two books of nonfiction, The Tyranny of E-mail and How to Read a Novelist, and the book of poetry, Maps. He has also edited two anthologies of writing on inequality, Tales of Two Cities and Tales of Two Americas. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York, where he teaches at The New School and is writer-in-residence at New York University. The executive editor at LitHub, he has published poems in Zyzzyva, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Nation. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Laura Da’, Layli Long Soldier & Heid E. Erdrich (Rebroadcast) Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

This episode of The Archive Project features a special discussion between contributors to the new anthology, New Poets of Native Nations, with Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Laura Da’, Layli Long Soldier, and editor Heid E. Erdrich. New Poets of Native Nations gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry. Editor Heid E. Erdrich has selected twenty-one poets whose first books were published after the year 2000 to highlight the exciting works of poets coming up after Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie. Collected here are poems of great breadth—long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics—and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now.

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).

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, was published by the University of Arizona Press and won a 2016 American Book Award. In 2015, Da’ was both a Made at Hugo House Fellow and a Jack Straw Fellow. She is featured in the new poetry collection New Poets of Native Nations. Her next book, Instruments of the True Measure, is forthcoming in 2018. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son.

Layli Long Soldier received a 2015 Lannan Fellowship for Poetry, a 2015 National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and a 2016 Whiting Writers’ Award. Her first volume of poetry, Whereas, was published in 2017 by Graywolf Press, and she is featured in New Poets of Native Nations (edited by Heid E. Erdrich).

Heid E. Erdrich is the author of five collections of poetry, including Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media. Most recently, she’s edited New Poets of Native Nations. She is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain, and lives and teaches in Minneapolis.

Abbi Jacobson (Rebroadcast) Oct 23, 2019

Show notes

Lindy West interviews Abbi Jacobson, about her life, career, and new book I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff, a hilarious and poignant collection about love, loss, work, comedy, and figuring out who you really are when you thought you already knew.

When Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions: Why wasn’t she going with friends? Wouldn’t it be incredibly lonely? The North route is better! Was it safe for a woman? The Southern route is the way to go! You should bring mace! And a common one: Why? But Abbi had always found comfort in solitude, and needed space to step back and hit the reset button. As she spent time in each city and town on her way to Los Angeles, she mulled over the big questions: What do I really want? What is the worst possible scenario in which I could run into my ex? How has the decision to wear my shirts tucked in been pivotal in my adulthood? In this collection of anecdotes, observations and reflections—all told in the sharp, wildly funny, and relatable voice that has endeared Abbi to critics and fans alike—readers will feel like they’re in the passenger seat on a fun and, ultimately, inspiring journey.

In this interview, at once sharply witty and deeply genuine in nature, Abbi discusses the stories behind the stories, giving us an intimate look at her life and career thus far.

Abbi Jacobson is an American comedian, writer, actress and illustrator. Trained at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, she is best known as the Series Creator, Executive Producer and star of the critically-acclaimed Comedy Central series, Broad City. Nominated for the ECNY’s “Best Web Series” award, the show premiered its fourth season in September, 2017. Jacobson is an AOLArtist and New York Times- bestselling author of her illustrated book, Carry This Book, which showcases bright, quirky, and colorful line drawings at the world around us, all through the framework of what we carry. She also has two coloring books: Color This Book: New York City and Color This Book: San Francisco.

Lindy West is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. Her work has also appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel, The Stranger, and others. She is the founder of I Believe You, It’s Not Your Fault, an advice blog for teens, as well as the co-founder of the reproductive rights destigmatization campaign #ShoutYourAbortion. Her first book, a memoir called Shrill, was released in 2016 by Hachette Books.

Lit Crawl 2018 (Rebroadcast) Oct 23, 2019

Show notes

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, and YesYes Books, and showcases poets Nabila Lovelace, Sophia Shalmiyev, and Stacey Tran. In the second segment, “OPPOSSUM: A Literary Caberet!”, writer Benjamin Soileau performs with musician Dustin Spillman, followed by a reading from writer Erica Trabold accompanied by musician Adam Trabold. And in the final segment, tribal elder and poet Ed Edmo of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe formally and fully recognizes the Portland area’s indigenous people in this first-ever Land Acknowledgement for Lit Crawl Portland and Portland Book Festival. Edmo was joined in the reading by indigenous poets Laura Da’ of the Eastern Shawnee and Trevino L. Brings Plenty of the Lakota.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty is a poet and musician who lives, works, and writes in Portland, OR. He is singer/songwriter/guitarist for the musical ensemble Ballads of Larry Drake. Trevino is an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, USA. His works include Wakpá Wanáǧi, Ghost River (2015); Real Indian Junk Jewelry (2012); Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets (2008).

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, was published by the University of Arizona Press and won a 2016 American Book Award. In 2015, Da’ was both a Made at Hugo House Fellow and a Jack Straw Fellow. Her newest book is Instruments of the True Measure. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son.

Ed Edmo is a Shoshone-Bannock poet, playwright, performer, traditional storyteller, tour guide, and lecturer on Northwest tribal culture; and he served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his family.

Nabila Lovelace is a born and raised Queens native, as well as a first generation American. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Narrative Northeast, Washington Square Review, Day One, ESPNW, and Vinyl. She is co-founder of The Conversation Literary Festival. In her debut collection, Sons of Achilles, Nabila Lovelace attempts to examine the liminal space between violence and intimacy.

Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to NYC in 1990. She is an MFA graduate of Portland State University with a second master’s degree in creative arts therapy from the School of Visual Arts. She lives in Portland with her two children. Mother Winter is her first book.

Benjamin Soileau is from south Louisiana. His fiction has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Grist, Opossum, Louisiana Literature, Bayou, and many other journals. His story won the 2018 Rumble Fish Quarterly New Year’s Writing Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He stages homes in Olympia, Washington. Reach him at bsoile2@gmail.com.

Adam Trabold is a designer currently living in Oregon with his wife Erica and their two cats, Ewok & Coco (yes, their names fit their personalities). Adam is obsessed with human-centered design, and gets excited about new technology, great records, and storytelling. His spare time is spent writing music with his band Adelaide, playing with digital synthesizers and analog electronics, and with his wife exploring the West Coast.

Erica Trabold is a Nebraska-born essayist. Her lyric essays appear in The Rumpus, Passages North, The Collagist, South Dakota Review, Seneca Review, Essay Daily, and elsewhere. A graduate of Oregon State University’s MFA program and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Erica writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon.

Stacey Tran is a writer from Portland, OR. She is the creator of Tender Table, a storytelling series about food, family, and identity. She is a member of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of writers and artists of the Vietnamese diaspora. Her writing can be found in BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and diaCRITICS. She is the author of Soap for the Dogs (Gramma, 2018; Black Ocean, 2019). She currently lives in Providence, RI.

Chef Edward Lee (Rebroadcast) Oct 10, 2019

Show notes

This conversation between chef Edward Lee and Sam Sifton, food editor for the New York Times, was from the Portland Book Festival in 2018. The Portland Book Festival 2019 schedule has just been announced! The Festival will take place on November 9 in downtown Portland. For more information about the author line up, schedule, and tickets visit: literary-arts.org

American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions, the innovations, the memories?

A natural-born storyteller, Lee decided to hit the road and spent two years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the country. There’s a Cambodian couple in Lowell, Massachusetts, and their efforts to re-create the flavors of their lost country. A Uyghur café in New York’s Brighton Beach serves a noodle soup that seems so very familiar and yet so very exotic—one unexpected ingredient opens a window onto an entirely unique culture. A beignet from Café du Monde in New Orleans, as potent as Proust’s madeleine, inspires a narrative that tunnels through time, back to the first Creole cooks, then forward to a Korean rice-flour hoedduck and a beignet dusted with matcha.

Sixteen adventures, sixteen vibrant new chapters in the great, evolving story of American cuisine. And forty recipes, created by Lee, that bring these new dishes into our own kitchens.

Edward Lee is the author of Smoke & Pickles and Buttermilk Graffiti; the chef/owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky; and culinary director of Succotash in Penn Quarter, Washington D.C. and National Harbor, Maryland. He appears frequently in print and on television, earning an Emmy nomination for his role in the Emmy Award–winning series The Mind of a Chef. Most recently, he wrote and hosted the feature documentary Fermented. He lives in Louisville and Washington, D.C. Visit Edward online at chefedwardlee.com

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