The Archive Project

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Margaret Atwood Dec 20, 2017

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, the legendary Margaret Atwood reads from two pieces of her short fiction. These works, which she reads publicly for the first time in Portland’s First Congregational Church, blend humor, empathy, and deep sentiment in ways that only Atwood can. With all her characteristic wit and humor, Atwood brings her work to life, finding levity in even the most difficult of subjects.

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and in Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College. Atwood is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her latest book of short stories is Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014). Her MaddAddam trilogy—the Giller and Booker prize-nominated Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013)—is currently being adapted for HBO. The Door is her latest volume of poetry (2007). Her most recent non-fiction books are Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008) and In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011). Her novels include The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; and The Robber Bride, Cat’s Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale—now an Emmy-winning Hulu Original Series—and The Penelopiad. Her most recent work includes Hag-Seed (2016), a novel revisitation of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, for the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, and Angel Catbird—with a cat-bird superhero—a graphic novel with co-creator Johnnie Christmas (Dark Horse, 2016). Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

George Saunders Dec 13, 2017

Show notes

In this episode, George Saunders discusses the process that lead to his award-winning first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which contemplates the time Abraham Lincoln spent in his son’s tomb following his death and the fate of the young boy’s soul. With all the characteristic wit and humor of his short stories, Saunders takes the audience through the process of writing the novel—from the first spark of inspiration decades ago, through many iterations, to the final masterpiece. Saunders explores both craft and the role of the literary artist today with a compassion and intimacy that resonates deeply in our current moment.

“If I am a novelist—and that’s open for debate—but if I am, and you are my dear reader and you pick up the novel and you know it’s a novel, we enter into a sacred, ancient contract of storyteller and story-receiver. The contract that we have entered into is: I am going to do whatever it takes, including small lies, exaggerations, omissions, compressions. My purpose is to, through multiple lies or fictions, to convey to you a higher truth. And in the process, by doing that, I’m availing myself of a higher truth—you are too—and in that sacred moment, like two fish rising, we kiss. That’s a very holy thing.”

George Saunders is the author of nine books, including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short-story collection). He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University

Kazuo Ishiguro (Rebroadcast) Dec 06, 2017

Show notes

Kazuo Ishiguro begins the interview by talking about growing up in a Japanese family in England and watching the British with “amused distance,” stating, “I was taught to respect British customs, but they were just that: values and customs that the natives adhered to.” His family finally decided that they would not return to Japan when he was 15, but he says that he first began writing novels with the idea of “this Japan that I never went back to.” He goes on to discuss the real-life places that writers build versions of in their imaginations. Ishiguro also answers questions about being an international writer in translation, saying, “My idea of an international story isn’t someone who gets on planes a lot; it’s universal because it’s something human that people of all cultures can relate to.” He goes on to discuss experiences from his life that have motivated him to take up specific themes.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s seven published books have won him numerous honors and wide renown. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have more than 1,000,000 copies in print across platforms, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. His most recent novel is The Buried Giant. (source: Random House)

I feel quite at home in big cities.”

“I would hope that something like The Remains of the Day would be universal, because essentially it isn’t, as a few people suggested…a study of the British class systems or anything like that, specifically. It might be that incidentally, but I always start with a fairly abstract idea about human beings and people. And I had certain actual themes that I wanted to express.”

“I know that a lot of writers write very fine books by taking a kind of alter ego of themselves and putting them through the story. Now, there’s a long tradition of that, and I know a lot of writers feel happier doing that. But I’m at the other end. I feel terribly inhibited if I try to work through a character who is, on the surface, like me.”

Reza Aslan Nov 30, 2017

Show notes

This episode of the Archive Project features writer and thinker Reza Aslan as he takes the listener on a historical journey to find the roots and reasons for faith. In this lecture, Aslan reflects on the nature of faith, highlighting the human tendency to depict higher powers in our own image. Aslan uses evidence from several archaeological sites—some from as far back as 14,000 B.C.—to illustrate the human drive toward ritual faith and humanization of the divine. Aslan asks the listener to consider not what we believe, but why. Using his vast knowledge of varied religions and cultures, Aslan creates a crash-course on the history of faith and its role in all our lives, regardless of belief.

“You could look at the entirety of human spirituality, the entire history of religious expression, and what you will see is one long, ever-evolving, and remarkably cohesive attempt to make sense of God by giving God our personality and our attributes, our emotions, our motivations, our strengths and our weaknesses, our vices, our virtues—even our own bodies. In short, by making God a human being.”

Reza Aslan is an internationally renowned writer, commentator, professor, producer, and scholar of religions. His books, including his #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, have been translated into dozens of languages around the world. He is also a recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award. Born in Iran, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife, author and entrepreneur, Jessica Jackley, and their three sons. Aslan currently teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

“I’m not saying there’s no such thing as God or that God is just some kind of human construct; that may be true, but it’s not something I’m interested in. I have no interest in having a conversation about whether or not God exists. I’m not here to prove one way or the other, because there ain’t no proof. Faith is a choice. I often say that anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to convert you…Faith is not a rational thing; it’s an experiential thing. It’s an emotion, like love.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates Nov 22, 2017

Show notes

This episode of The Archive Project features journalist and New York Times bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with the New York Times’ Jenna Wortham at the 2017 Portland Book Festival. Hailed by Toni Morrison as the intellectual heir to James Baldwin, Coates has become one of the most sought after voices on the subject of race in America. In this interview, he discusses the Black American experience as described in his newest book We Were Eight Years in Power, a collection of new and selected essays that focus on former President Barack Obama’s ascent to the highest office in the nation as well as the sharp backlash that followed.

“White Guilt is a thing that people mock now…but it really is the guilt of power. You understand? And recognizing that that power is being used in an unjust way. And you’re part of it.”

“The theory is, in a lot of black folks’ circles, if we make ourselves respectable to them then maybe that will ameliorate the hatred. But they have it wrong. They hate you because you’re respectable; it’s the respectableness that inspires the hate, because you undercut [the stereotype] by your very example.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years In Power and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Jenna Wortham is an award-winning journalist for New York Times Magazine, among other things. Her work has been featured in Medium, Smithsonian Magazine, The Village Voice, and Vogue. Wortham also hosts the New York Times podcast Still Processing.

Francis Ford Coppola in conversation with Melena Ryzik Nov 15, 2017

Show notes

This episode of The Archive Project features filmmaker and writer Francis Ford Coppola discussing his new book, Live Cinema and Its Techniques, with New York Times’ Melena Ryzik. In this eye-opening interview, Coppola discusses his thoughts on live cinema, a technique in which movies are performed live and broadcast via satellite into theaters. Throughout the conversation, Coppola looks back on his own career and the history of the art form itself, giving us an intimate and informative glimpse into the mind of one the greatest American filmmakers of his generation.

Perhaps this new method, this digital method of making films might imply different kinds of films, films that wouldn’t have been possible in the old, mechanical, photochemical era. And one of the aspects that it could be is that you could make cinema—basically what we know as cinema, movies—and they could be made in a live performance. And this old tradition of performance, which has been with the theatre for thousands of years, wouldn’t necessarily be lost.”

Francis Ford Coppola is a writer, director, and entrepreneur perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning masterpieces, The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979). In addition to his numerous directing credits, Coppola has written or adapted many of the stories he’s brought to the screen. In 1997, he began a decade-long break from filmmaking, focusing on a number of new ventures, including Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine of essays and short stories which publishes emerging writers alongside literary powerhouses. Since his return to film in 2007, Coppola has released three films through his production company, American Zoetrope. The Godfather Notebook, Coppola’s notes on the novel as he made the film, was published in 2016, followed by this year’s Live Cinema and Its Techniques. Coppola is currently creating a four-part “live cinema” movie based on his own family’s multigenerational history.

Melena Ryzik is the lead writer of the New York Times’ Carpetbagger blog. In addition to being a general assignment culture reporter, covering film, music, theater, television, visual art, dance and the occasional Dumpster pool party or eco-art-barge, Ms. Ryzik has chronicled cultural life in New York for the UrbanEye video series and written the UrbanEye e-mail, a daily events guide. She joined The New York Times in 2001 writing for metro and investigative news, and got her start on the red carpet beat as a contributing writer for The Times column Boldface Names. She enjoys riding her bicycle to black tie events.

Colson Whitehead & Yaa Gyasi Nov 08, 2017

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, Colson Whitehead and Yaa Gyasi discuss the intersection of race and fiction. In his novel, The Underground Railroad, Whitehead explores a world in which the infamous Underground Railroad is not a euphemism, but a reality—a subterranean railroad system connecting alternate versions of America in each state along its route. In Homegoing, Gyasi tells the story of one family, spread over 250 years and split by the slave trade across two continents. Both Whitehead and Gyasi use fiction as a tool to get at larger truths about race, slavery, and their legacies in America and abroad. This discussion is moderated by Rukaiyah Adams.

“I didn’t have to force comparisons between law enforcement in 1850 and 2015; the language that I would use to describe my experience is the same way a slave would describe his or her experience with a slave patroller.” –Colson Whitehead

“For me, this book is so much about the fact that a lot of these things, a lot of these issues that we are dealing with in the present, particularly issues around racial justice…they don’t appear out of nowhere. There has been groundwork laid for them over the course of many, many, many years. And it’s important to kind of not take things out of context and just start to believe that we’re living kind of divorced from history. Because we aren’t.” –Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn.

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and The Colossus of New York. He is also a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. He lives in New York City.

Rukaiyah Adams is an avid reader and lover of American History. For work, she is the Chief Investment Officer at Meyer Memorial Trust. She is responsible for leading all investment activities to ensure the long-term financial strength of the organization, including investment policy, asset allocation, performance measurement, manager selection, and risk management. Before joining Meyer, she ran the $6.5 Billion capital markets fund at The Standard. Rukaiyah is the Vice Chair of the Oregon Investment Council, the board that manages approximately $90 Billion for the State of Oregon and PERS; she also serves on the board of OPB. Rukaiyah holds a BA in African American Studies with academic distinction from Carleton College and a JD from Stanford Law, where she was on the Law and Policy Review and the Co-President of the Law Student Association. She also has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Jonathan Lethem, Helen Phillips & Dana Spiotta Nov 02, 2017

Show notes

This episode features authors Jonathan Lethem, Helen Phillips, and Dana Spiotta as they discuss the presence of the fantastic or strange in their work. In The Gambler’s Anatomy, Jonathan Lethem tells the story of Bruno Alexander, an international backgammon hustler who believes he’s psychic. Helen Phillips’s short story collection, Some Possible Solutions, takes us through a series what-ifs and dystopias in which Phillips’s characters struggle to develop meaningful relationships amidst the chaos. Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others is the story of Meadow, Carrie, and Jelly, three women grappling with questions of art, ethics, and intimacy in 1980s Los Angeles. This panel is moderated by BuzzFeed’s Isaac Fitzgerald.

Jonathan Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His works include his début novel Gun with Occasional Music, a finalist for the 1994 Nebula Award; Motherless Brooklyn, winner of both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Macallan Gold Dagger for crime fiction; and The Fortress of Solitude, a New York Times best-seller. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The New York Times. Lethem is also a 2005 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Helen Phillips is the author of four books, including the short story collection Some Possible Solutions, winner of the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award; The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and the collection And Yet They Were Happy, named a notable collection by The Story Prize. Her work has been featured on Selected Shorts, at the Brooklyn Museum, and in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and Tin House, among others.

Dana Spiotta is the author of four novels: Innocents and Others; Stone Arabia, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in fiction; Eat the Document, a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and Lightning Field. Spiotta was a Guggenheim Fellow, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, and won the 2008-9 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. She lives in Syracuse with her daughter Agnes and teaches in the Syracuse University MFA program.

Richard Russo, Karen Russell & Kevin Young Oct 25, 2017

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, Richard Russo, Karen Russell, and Kevin Young discuss inequality and its influence on their work. In Everybody’s Fool, Richard Russo revisits the town of North Bath, NY and its colorful citizens a decade after the events of Nobody’s Fool. Karen Russell takes us to the edge of reality with Swamplandia!, the story of an alligator wrestling family, the Bigtrees, and their struggle to maintain their way of life in the Florida Everglades. Kevin Young’s Blue Laws takes us on tour through the poet’s prolific career and blurs the already thin line between the personal and the political. This panel is moderated by literary critic John Freeman.

Richard Russo is the author of eight novels, two collections of stories, and Elsewhere, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like his earlier novel Nobody’s Fool, was adapted for the screen in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries. In 2016 he published Everybody’s Fool, a sequel to his 1993 book Nobody’s Fool.

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction, and her first novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. She is a graduate of the Columbia MFA program, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient. Russell is also the author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories, and Sleep Donation: A Novella. She lives in Philadelphia.

Kevin Young is the author of eleven books of poetry, prose, and nonfiction including Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, longlisted for the National Book Award; Jelly Roll: a blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, winner of the PEN Open Book Award and finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He is the editor of eight other collections, most recently The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010. He is currently the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and is set to become the Poetry Editor of the New Yorker.

John Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s, a literary annual published by Grove Press. He has written several books of nonfiction including, How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as two collections of poems, Maps and The Park. The former editor of Granta, he is now Artist-in-Residence at NYU and executive editor of The Literary Hub. Between 2014 and 2020, he edited a series of anthologies on inequality, concluding with Tales of Two Planets, which focuses on the climate crisis and global inequality. Freeman’s work has been translated into more than 20 languages and appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Zyzzyva. He lives in London.

Alice Hoffman Oct 19, 2017

Show notes

This episode of The Archive Project features celebrated novelist and screenwriter, Alice Hoffman in conversation with the Director of the Multnomah County Library Vailey Oehlke at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival. Hoffman joined us at Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival in 2016 to discuss her then newly published novel, Faithful. This New York Times bestseller follows Shelby Richmond, a young woman burdened by guilt, on her emotional journey to rediscover herself after terrible tragedy.

Alice Hoffman is the New York Times bestselling author of Practical Magic, Here on Earth, and The Dovekeepers, which was praised by Toni Morrison as, “beautiful, harrowing, a major contribution to twenty-first century literature.” Hoffman has published over thirty novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults. Her work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Hoffman’s novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and other magazines.

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