This week, we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month with a conversation from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Jane Hirshfield is one of our most important living poets, and last year she released The Asking, a new and selected volume. Hirshfield has published ten volumes of poetry, two now-classic essay collections on the craft of poetry, and she has co-translated four books presenting world poets from the deep past. Hirshfield is in conversation with her friend and fellow poet, Major Jackson, host of The Slowdown podcast and newsletter, who also released a new and selected, titled Razzl ..read more

April is National Poetry Month, and we are celebrating with a collection of some of our favorite poetry moments over the years at Literary Arts. We will hear from a Portland high school student, the United States poet laureate, an Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient, a Nobel Prize winner, and more.   Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate, speaks at Portland Arts & Lectures in April 2023 about how important reading poetry has been to her in connecting to herself and to the natural world, and how she came to poetry as young girl.     Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney shares one of his ear ..read more

We’re reaching back into the archive to 2009 to bring you a powerful talk by Karen Armstrong, originally broadcast in 2016.   Armstrong has written 30 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how these faiths shaped world history and drive current events. A former nun, Armstrong wrote her first book, Through the Narrow Gate, about her seven years in a convent, and then later, The Spiral Staircase, about her subsequent spiritual awakening.  She first rose to prominence with her book A History of God in 1993 and later lan ..read more

This episode of The Archive Project features a conversation between 2020 Oregon Book Award winners Kesha Ajose Fisher and Ashley Toliver, with Oregon Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani. Much of their conversation focuses on craft—writing from the space of the unknown, writing as self-discovery, the role of time in the creative process—but they also discuss what it is like to cultivate a diligent writing practice while juggling motherhood, family, and all the other human demands during these especially trying times. These three are among some of the most exciting writers at work today, and their conver ..read more

In this episode, we bring you a talk from Ruth Ozeki. It was the culminating event of the 2023 Everybody Reads program. Every year, the Multnomah County Library chooses one book they hope the whole city will read. Between January and April, the Library, and their partner organizations, host events based around the themes of the book, and they distribute thousands of free copies—thanks to the Library Foundation—to readers of all ages from across the county. At Literary Arts, our role is to bring the author to town for a talk in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The 2023 Everybody Reads pr ..read more

This week we have a conversation featuring Naomi Alderman, who joined us for Portland Book Festival in November 2023 for the very first event for her new novel, The Future. Alderman is the author of the mega best-seller, Barack Obama-endorsed, Margaret Atwood-mentored novel The Power. She talks with interviewer Omar El Akkad about the pressure she felt writing this follow-up, about a handful of friends who plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech billionaires who are threatening it. Bookpage called it “A daring, sexy, thrilling novel that may be the most wryly funny book about the e ..read more

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature legendary actor, filmmaker, and writer, Tom Hanks. Hanks was joined on stage at the Keller auditorium in May 2023 by fiction and screenwriter Jon Raymond. What’s great about this conversation is that the through line involves Tom Hanks’s longtime make-up artist Danny Stripeke; because in many ways it reveals why Hanks is such an incredible storyteller and a magnetic personality. In the spring of 2023, Hanks had published his second work of fiction and his first novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. It isn’t a novel abo ..read more

This episode is a conversation from the 2023 Portland Book Festival on food, cooking, family, traditions, and storytelling. And like some of the best meals, it just happens to be … vegetarian.    Portland’s superstar chef Gregory Gourdet, chef/owner at kann, which was awarded “Best New Restaurant 2023” from multiple outlets, including the James Beard Awards, is also the author of a wonderful cookbook, Everyone’s Table. Gourdet led a conversation between fellow Portland chef and restauranteur Aaron Adams of Fermenter, which last year published a Fermenter cookbook co-authored by Portl ..read more

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature nonfiction writer David Grann on the release of his new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Murder, and Mutiny. Grann’s literary journalism combines archival research with in-person interviews and on-the-ground investigation, and it’s said that he’s obsessed with stories, and how they are told. Grann has said, “Stories and narratives are always the way I try to make sense of the world. I think that’s why we all tell stories. …I think it’s interesting how reality can blend into myth and fiction—and how we tell these stories can shape us as pe ..read more

In this episode of The Archive Project, we have an event from the 2023 Portland Book Festival featuring two wonderful poets, whose friendship and fandom shines through in their conversation. Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle and host of The Slowdown poetry podcast and newsletter interviews fellow poet Tracy K. Smith about her latest book, To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. To Free the Captives is a personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in American might come to a new view of our shared past. In their discussion of the book, Major and Tracy ..read more