The Archive Project

Latest Episodes:

Reading Romance at Portland Book Festival 2024 Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and love is in the air on The Archive Project. We are featuring two conversations from the 2024 Portland Book Festival with bestselling contemporary romance writers.

In the last few decades, writing romance has become big business. From the Fabio-adorned mass market paperbacks of the 90s to self-published ebooks like Fifty Shades of Gray in the early 2000s, to now, when we are amidst an explosion of the genre with more than 39 million print copies of romance novels sold in 2023 alone. Even local libraries in Portland have said they’ve seen the number of romance novels checked out double since 2018.

Readers are officially hot and bothered by this genre, and today we have conversations with some of the best contemporary romance writers. Later in the episode we’ll hear from Red, White & Royal Blue megastar author Casey McQuiston, discussing their latest book, The Pairing, with Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth.

But first up, OPB’s own Crystal Ligori, host of All Things Considered, is in conversation with Lily Chu, author of The Takedown and Katelyn Doyle, author of Just Some Stupid Love Story.

Lily Chu loves ordering the second-cheapest wine, wearing perfume all the time, and staying up far too late reading a good book. She writes uplit fiction set in Toronto with strong Asian characters. Her latest novel is titled The Takedown.

Katelyn Doyle is a writer based in Los Angeles. Just Some Stupid Love Story is her debut rom-com. She also writes as the USA Today bestselling historical romance novelist Scarlett Peckham.

Casey McQuiston is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies, including One Last Stop, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, and Red, White & Royal Blue, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Bon Appetit. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, Casey now lives in New York City with a poodle mix named Pepper. Their latest novel is The Pairing.

Timothy Egan Feb 10, 2025

Show notes

A life-long Northwesterner, Egan has spent much of his career exploring his home region. One might even say he is the quintessential Pacific Northwest writer. He served as the first Pacific Northwest correspondent for the New York Times and he also wrote one of the definitive books about our region in 1990, The Good Rain.

During his eighteen-year tenure at the New York Times, Egan covered everything from the Exxon Valdez disaster to the OJ Simpson trial. In 2001, he and a team of reporters received a Pulitzer Prize for the series, How Race is Lived in America. Somehow, between reporting trips, he also found time to write multiple award-winning, best-selling books. He won the National Book Award in 2006 for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those who Survived the Great American Dustbowl, which was a New York Times bestseller and led to a Ken Burns documentary.

Egan joined us to talk about his most recent book is A Fever in the Heartland: The Klu Klux’s Plot to Take Over American, and the Woman who Stopped Them. Once again, Egan turns his attention to an American disaster—this time, a social and political disaster of monstrous moral proportions, tracing the swift rise and eventual collapse of the Klu Klux Klan in 1920’s Indiana. A place and time, he notes, “where one in three white males swore on a Bible to uphold white supremacy.”

A Fever in the Heartland is rigorously researched, and deeply — overwhelmingly — troubling. As a reader, it is not hard to draw parallels between these events that occurred a century ago, and all that is happening now. Egan himself said, in a recent interview, “I’m a big believer in the line that history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.” But, to explore such a dark chapter in our history requires a firm belief in our potential as a country and as a species. The only way to rise to that potential is to see ourselves clearly and learn from our past.

Timothy Egan is an American journalist and author of ten books. The most recent, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, was an immediate New York Times bestseller. Egan worked for The New York Times for 18 years, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, and then as a national enterprise reporter. As part of a team of reporters Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2001 for writing a series called How Race is Lived in America. Egan lives in Seattle with his family.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Omar El Akkad Feb 03, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, we feature Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Omar El Akkad from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in October 2024.

Coates’ versatility and virtuosity as a writer makes him one of the most singular and important writers at work today. He first rose to national recognition as a staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine, and in particular for an article he wrote in 2014 titled The Case for Reparations. A year later, Coates published his second book, a long essay called Between the World and Me which became an international bestseller. Coates went on to write a novel called The Water Dancer, for Marvel’s Black Panther comic book series, and a published collection of essays titled We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. For his work he has won a National Magazine Award, a MacArthur fellowship and the National Book Award, among many other prizes.

He joined us in fall 2024 to talk about The Message, a new book of essays set in Senegal, South Carolina and Palestine about how our stories – personal or political – can both hide and reveal the truth.

Coates is in conversation with Omar El Akkad, who is a journalist and author of the novels American War, What Strange Paradise and most recently One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, his debut book of nonfiction which publishes in February 2025.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning author and journalist. His books include Between The World and Me and The Water Dancer. He is currently a writer-in-residence at Howard University.

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award. His books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world.

Rachel Kushner & Danzy Senna Jan 27, 2025

Show notes

This week’s episode features one of the most highly anticipated conversations from the 2024 Portland Book Festival. Author Rachel Kushner joined the festival with her most recent novel, the Booker Prize finalist Creation Lake, her take on a noir spy thriller. We paired her with Danzy Senna, whose new novel is Colored Television, the story of a struggling novelist attempting to break into Hollywood. We invited Oregon-based writer Mat Johnson, whose most recent book is the fantastic Invisible Things, to moderate their conversation.

This conversation was titled “Deceit and Dark Humor.” Both novels featuring protagonists who are knowingly lying to the people around them: Kushner’s narrator is a spy tasked with infiltrating an anarchist cooperative in France and is actively deceiving everyone she encounters, while Senna’s protagonist, Jane, spirals into more and more lies as she tries to create a television show with a big-shot Hollywood producer.

We have a special treat at the end of the episode. Another feature of Portland Book Festival is the annual launch of our Writers in the Schools anthology, featuring creative writing from Portland-area public high school students. We’ll hear from two students:

William Nobles, Franklin HS, short story Ceiling Man

Ari Romero, junior at Lincoln HS, piece called Missing the Mark

Rachel Kushner is the author of Creation Lake, her latest novel, The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection, and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books are translated into twenty-seven languages.

Danzy Senna is the author of four previous works of fiction, including the bestselling Caucasia and, most recently, Colored Television, as well as a memoir. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University of Southern California.

Mat Johnson is a Philip H. Knight Chair of the Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications include the novels Invisible Things, Loving Day, and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the United States Artists James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Paul Auster & Siri Hustvedt Jan 19, 2025

Show notes

This week we have a conversation between one of the ultimate literary power couples: Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt.

Paul Auster passed away in April of 2024. The New York Times obituary called him the “patron saint of literary Brooklyn.” He wrote screenplays, poetry, and nonfiction, but is probably best known as a novelist, and as an novelist his best known work is the New York Trilogy—City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, all published in the mid-1980s–which he discusses in this conversation, along with his early career as a translator of poems from the French.

Siri Hustvedt is a novelist and essayist; her essays include the collections A Pleas for Eros and the memoir The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves. Her novels include The Summer Without Men and The Blazing World. In this conversation she talks about the book she was writing at the time, The Sorrows of an American.

Auster and Hustvedt were married in 1982. They came to Portland in January of 2006 and interviewed each other. At times it feels as if you are eavesdropping on an especially intelligent dinner table conversation. Their respect for each other’s work is delightful to hear – and several of the questions they remark they’ve never asked the other! It’s a rare opportunity to listen in on two great minds in conversation.

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.

Siri Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, three collections of essays, a work of non-fiction, and six novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Her most recent novel The Blazing World was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won The Los Angeles Book Prize for fiction. In 2012 she was awarded the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weil Cornell Medical College in New York. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.

Connie Chung Jan 06, 2025

Show notes

This week’s episode features the trailblazing, legendary journalist: Connie Chung, in conversation about her new memoir, CONNIE. In her book, Chung shares the story of her decades-long career as an Asian woman in the white-male-dominated world of broadcast journalism, when she relentlessly pursued stories and fought hard for scoops. Her hard work – her schedule for many years was truly unbelievable, with six days of work on multiple programs at her own request — Her hard work, which she connects to her Chinese family tradition, catapulted her onto the co-anchor chair on the CBS Evening News and made her a household name.

Chung relates her battles and her victories with wit and humor and doesn’t hold back from calling out the sexism and racism she endured throughout her career. The book is also a portrait of an era in broadcast news where the lines between serious investigative journalism and tabloid fodder became blurred, a line Chung was often forced to walk against her will.

Journalist Lisa Ling, of CBS News, said, “For generations of Asian Americans, Connie Chung will always be our superhero. Someone who looked like us who, on a national stage, held our most important political leaders accountable. She was bold, aggressive, and unafraid. So many of us pursued broadcast journalism because she singularly showed us it was possible. I didn’t think I could respect her any more than I already do, but this most candid account of her journey reminds us that Connie Chung is nothing short of a true American icon.”

Connie Chung was interviewed by Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor, in front of a live audience in September 2024.

Connie Chung, pioneer news anchor and reporter was the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News, the flagship news broadcast on CBS. Connie was only the second woman to anchor any network evening broadcast in television history.

Salman Rushdie (Rebroadcast) Dec 30, 2024

Show notes

This episode of The Archive Project features author Salman Rushdie reading from and discussing his 1999 New York Times bestseller The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Just one year after almost a decade in hiding from the Iranian government, Rushdie made his first public appearance in Portland, discussing the ideas, both mythical and musical, that inspired this New York Times bestseller. In his remaking of the myth of Orpheus, Rushdie tells the story of Vina Apsara, a pop star, and Ormus Cama, an extraordinary songwriter and musician, who captivate and change the world through their music and their romance. Beginning in Bombay in the fifties, moving to London in the sixties, and New York for the last quarter century, the novel pulsates with a half-century of music and celebrates the power of rock ‘n’ roll. In this episode, Rushdie discusses the musical and mythological influences that inspired this ambitious work of magical realism.

“The thing that I wanted to do most of all was to write a love story. And to find a way of writing a contemporary love story that was neither gushily sentimental nor fashionably cynical, but which could face up to great passion and try and make sense of it. And so, in my usual perverse way, while trying to write a modern story I found myself thinking about an ancient myth.”

Salman Rushdie is the author of several novels, including Grimus, Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, and Shalimar the Clown. He has written collections of short stories, including East, West, and co-edited with Elizabeth West a collection of Indian literature in English, Mirrorwork. He has also published several works of nonfiction, among them The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, The Wizard of Oz, and Joseph Anton, a memoir of his life under the fatwa issued after the publication of The Satanic Verses. His fourteenth novel, Victory City, released in 2023.

Rita Dove (Rebroadcast) Dec 23, 2024

Show notes

On April 5, 2016, former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove was honored as Oregon State University’s Stone Award winner. The Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement honors a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed work and been a dedicated mentor to succeeding generations of young writers. In her acceptance interview with OSU Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing Karen Holmberg, Dove addresses her writing process, adapting her work to the stage, and facing fear through poetry, among other subjects.

“I think by facing it—not trying to conquer it, but by facing it and entering it—I feel a little less afraid of it. I feel like I’m getting to know the fear. I mean, half of fear—well, half of anything—is the fear of the unknown.”

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate, is the only poet honored with both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. Her recent works include Playlist for the Apocalypse, Sonata Mulattica, and the National Book Award-shortlisted Collected Poems: 1974-2004. In 2021 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She lives in Charlottesville, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.

“I don’t think there’s any shame is subterfuge. I don’t think that tacking it straight on is everybody’s thing—and in fact, what is really frustrating is if you have a fear, or you have an emotion you really want to get out, and you try to pour it out and it isn’t a good poem…One of the things I think a young poet can do is to go at it sideways, to tell it slant.”

Yann Martel (Rebroadcast) Dec 15, 2024

Show notes

“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

In this episode of The Archive Project, Yann Martel reads selections from his novel Life of Pi, which received the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and was later adapted into a feature film. Between readings, Martel shares information about his writing process and his overarching philosophy behind the book. At the conclusion of the reading, he answers a series of questions from the audience, including the number one inquiry on everyone’s mind: Just how will reading this novel make a person believe in God?

“I must say a word about fear: It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.”

Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963, the son of Canadian parents studying graduate courses abroad. Both of his parents went on to join the Canadian Foreign Service, and Martel divided his childhood between Costa Rica, France, Spain, Mexico, and Canada. This wanderlust continued into his adulthood, when he traveled to Iran, Turkey, and India before taking up residence in Montreal.

Martel worked a variety of odd jobs in his early 20s—including tree planter, dishwasher, and security guard—before devoting himself to writing at age 27. He gained international attention in 2002 for his second novel and third publication, Life of Pi, a fantasy adventure about a boy stranded in a lifeboat with a host of zoo animals, most notably a tiger. Life of Pi won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and was made into a feature film in 2012, winning 4 academy awards.

Martel’s other works include We Ate the Children Last, a collection of short stories, and the novel Beatrice and Virgil, which was a New York Times best seller and winner of the Financial Times Fiction of the Year Award. In 2012, he published 101 Letters to a Prime Minister, a collection of correspondences to the prime minister of Canada. His latest novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, was published in 2016. He currently lives in Saskatchewan.

“The proof of God is not in the story. The proof of God is that there are stories.”

2024 Portland Book Festival Dec 09, 2024

Show notes

In this episode of The Archive Project, we take you behind the scenes at the 2024 Portland Book Festival, hosted by Literary Arts in downtown Portland on November 2, 2024. The festival featured over 100 writers in more than 50 events throughout the day.

Our editor and producer Matthew Workman is stepping in front of the microphone for this one, guiding you through the festival as he searches for festival authors and asks them to share their book recommendations. You’ll not only get a behind the scenes look at the festival, but you’ll get plenty of books to add to your own to-read list or maybe for gift inspiration this season.

In this episode, we’ll hear from Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, author of Thunder Song.

Tracy O’Neill, author of Woman of Interest.

Mat Johnson, author of Invisible Things.

Lupita Aquino, known as @Lupita.Reads on Instagram and TikTok.

Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth.

Margaux Meganck, author of the childrens picture book Speck.

And Brian Evenson, author of Good Night Sleep Tight.

With the holiday season upon us, we hope you get some gift-giving inspiration from this weeks episode. You’ll also get a peek behind the scenes at the festival, where authors geek out about their fellow authors.

We hope you enjoy this taste of Portland Book Festival! Stay tuned for more episodes from Portland Book Festival later this season.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected