The Archive Project

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 program featured Ruth Ozeki and her novel A Tale for the Time Being.

Ozeki is the author of four novels, several of which have been international bestsellers. She is also a filmmaker, a teacher, and, astonishingly, also an ordain Zen Buddhist Priest. In many ways, all of these facets of her professional and spiritual life can be found shaping and influencing A Tale for the Time Being.

Ozkei’s talk is both fascinating and refreshing for her candor about how hard the work of writing fiction can be— a process for her that is, by her own account, frustrating, time consuming, mysterious, and deeply rewarding. The story of how A Tale for the Time Being was completed— and it almost wasn’t— is a ten-year journey interrupted and upended by personal and world events, and sustained by the voice of Nao, the main character, that kept talking to Ozeki the whole time.

“Here’s a tip for emerging writers […] when a character deigns to speak to you, you must stop whatever it is you are doing and write down what they are saying, otherwise they will go an find another writer to talk to.”

Get your copy of A Tale for the Time Being from Bookshop.org

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of three novels, My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and has been published in over thirty countries. The Los Angeles Times called the novel “exquisite,” the Washington Post called it a “dazzling tapestry of metaphor and meaning,” and the Oprah Magazine declared it “masterfully woven.” Her latest novel is The Book of Form and Emptiness. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones. She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foun­dation and teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.

The 2024 Everybody Reads book is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. For information about how to engage with the program, visit the Multnomah County Library’s web site. Gabrielle Zevin will be in Portland on Thursday, April 4 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for the culminating event of the 2024 Everybody Reads Program. For information about tickets, visit literary-arts.org.

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 end of civilization you’ll ever read.”

The conversation explores different modes of storytelling, from novel writing, of course, and Alderman also shares her experience working on the TV adaptation of The Power and having to approach her own story in a different way once more people became involved. Alderman is also a successful video game designer, and she and El Akkad make a great case about the storytelling in video games.

“Hillary Mantel said, “A novel brings the news.” I love that thought. I’m very interested in novels that speak to what’s happening now.”

Naomi Alderman is the bestselling author of The Power, which was the winner of the 2017 Baileys’ Women’s Prize for Fiction. It was longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize and chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Power topped Barack Obama’s list of his favorite books from 2017 and has been translated into more than thirty languages. Naomi grew up in London and attended Oxford University and UEA. Her latest book, The Future, was released in November 2023.

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. His latest novel is What Strange Paradise, which won the 2022 Ken Kesey Award for Fiction

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 about how to make films, nor one about the celebrities who act in them. It’s about the hundreds of people you never see on screen, but are the ones who actually make the film: the gaffers, and electricians, the producers and directors, the prop crew, and yes the make-up artists.

In this conversation, Hanks talks about his childhood and the long journey of his career, one in which he has been actor, producer, director and writer. With humor and reverence, he retells the stories of the incredible cast of characters he has met along the way, while also talking about the chaos and absurdity of shooting a film and the surprises in the process, both thrilling and sometimes disappointing, that come with the massive, collaborative undertaking of making cinema.

Tom Hanks has won Academy Awards for best actor for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. He has starred in, among many other films, Big, Sleepless in Seattle, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, Cast Away, Catch Me If You Can, Captain Phillips, Bridge of Spies, Sully, Toy Story, The Post, and It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. He is also the author of a best-selling collection of stories, Uncommon Type.

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.

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 Portland’s own Liz Crain (Dumplings Equal Love) about vegan fermentation. 

Joining our Portlanders is recipe developer Hetty Lui McKinnon, frequent contributor to New York Times Cooking and author of To Asia, with Love and, most recently, the cookbook Tenderheart. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, McKinnon is now based in Brooklyn, New York. 

So why are we talking about cookbooks on a literary show? Food is storytelling, and this conversation reveals the rich stories in our recipes, in what we cook and what we eat. Food connects us to our ancestry and personal food traditions, and can open our world to new tastes, much like we can find both reflections of ourselves in stories and doors to new worlds. Food tells a story, and the group talks about how our food connects us not only to the past but to our present community, and even to the future, in creating new traditions. 

Aaron Adams: Forever curious about all things culinary, Aaron started venturing into fermentation when seeking to expand his repertoire after switching to a vegan diet. Years later, you can find house fermented and cultured foods, from tempeh and koji to sauerkraut and kombucha, finding center focus at his restaurants. Wanting to share his fermentation knowledge in an easy-to-understand way, Aaron worked to create his first book, Fermenter: DIY Fermentation for Vegan Fare. Come say “Hi” to Chef Aaron while he’s working service at Workshop or Fermenter when you’re in Portland, Oregon.

Liz Crain is the author of Food Lover’s Guide to Portland and Dumplings Equal Love, and coauthor of the cookbooks Toro Bravo and Hello! My Name Is Tasty, as well as Grow Your Own: Understanding, Cultivating, and Enjoying Cannabis. Her latest cookbook is Fermenter: DIY Fermentation for Vegan Fare coauthored with chef Aaron Adams. She is a longtime writer on Pacific Northwest food and drink, and her writing has appeared in Lucky Peach, Food & Wine, the Sun magazine, the Progressive, and the Guardian. She is also a seasoned copywriter, fiction writer, as well as co-organizer of the annual Portland Fermentation Festival.

Hetty Lui McKinnon is a Chinese Australian cook and food writer. A James Beard Foundation finalist, she is the author of four other cookbooks, including the much-loved To Asia, With Love (2021), the award-winning Family: New Vegetarian Comfort Food to Nourish Every Day (2019), Neighbourhood: Hearty Salads and Plant-Based Recipes from Home and Abroad (2017), and Community: Salad Recipes from Arthur Street Kitchen (2014). Hetty is also the editor and publisher of multicultural food journal Peddler and the host of the magazine’s podcast The House Specials. She is a regular recipe contributor to The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Epicurious.com, and ABC Everyday; and her recipes have appeared in Food52, the Guardian, The Washington Post and more. Born and raised in Sydney, she now resides in Brooklyn, New York.

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. A native of Queens, NY, Gregory ran the kitchen at Portland’s Departure Restaurant + Lounge for 10 years, leaving in 2019 to focus on opening kann. An avid traveler and lifelong student of food and culture, Gregory has made a name for himself by infusing methods and ingredients from all over the world, balanced together with his own Haitian heritage, and creating signature flavors adored for their seasonality, boldness, complexity, and spice. 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, the ultimate guide to cooking globally-inspired dishes free of gluten, dairy, soy, legumes, and grains.

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, Mutiny and Murder.

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 people, and shape us as nations.”

Those themes reverberate in his other work, including as a New Yorker staff writer and in the National Book Award finalist and bestseller Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, which was recently made into an Oscar-nominated film of the same name, directed by Martin Scorsese. In fact, Grann has been called “the man Hollywood can’t stop reading.” His first book and two of his New Yorker stories have also been adapted, with at least two more of his projects in the works.

New York Magazine declared Grann “one of preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today,” and he was named the inaugural Barnes & Noble Author of the Year in 2023.

David Grann is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON was a finalist for The National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is also the author of THE WHITE DARKNESS and the collection THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. Grann’s storytelling has garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York.

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 America might come to a new view of our shared past. In their discussion of the book, Jackson and Smith touch on a multitude of subjects personal, political, and even spiritual, and they keep coming back to the importance and impact of language, and the power language has for liberation, but also for captivity and enforcing hierarchy.

Tracy K. Smith is a librettist, translator, and the author of five acclaimed poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States. She lives in Massachusetts.

Major Jackson is the author of six volumes of poetry. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review and the host of the podcast The Slowdown, Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In this episode of The Archive Project, we reach back deep into the archive for a lecture by Caryl Phillips from Portland Arts and Lectures in 1999. It’s a fascinating talk about the tragic life of singer and songwriter Marvin Gaye. 

Caryl Phillips was born on the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts in 1958 and was raised in Leeds, England. His career began in the 1980s British theater and quickly established him as a new and exciting voice. His first novel The Final Passage, published in 1985, was a breakout success and revealed a writer who would forge a long career writing for the stage, page, radio, and screen. He also became a celebrated teacher and a successful editor.  

He joined Portland Arts & Lectures at a moment when his career was gaining wider recognition and as he was playing a greater international role advocating for writers, including giving the keynote speech at the PEN International Congress in 1998 in Stockholm. 

In this talk, Phillips takes on the life of Marvin Gaye as his subject, including how racism shaped Gaye’s life and musical career, his troubled relationship to masculinity and sexuality, and his sense of identity on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a tragic life, ultimately, and Phillips explores it with a clear sense of how our history is global and deeply personal. 

Note: Many of the subjects discussed in this talk many not be suitable for all listeners. 

Caryl Phillips is the award-winning author of eleven novels, four stage plays, and five volumes of nonfiction, in addition to numerous radio plays, scripts, and essays. Identity, migration, and history are among the main themes of his writing, which also stands out for its formal daring.

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature best-selling, award-winning novelist Ann Patchett, who discusses her latest novel, Tom Lake, with Portland’s own Cheryl Strayed.

Ann Patchett is one of our most beloved contemporary authors. She is the author of two children’s books, four books of nonfiction, and nine novels. The New York Times Book Review has said “expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett’s fiction.” She is masterful at portraying specific moments that shed light on universal truths, and her newest book, Tom Lake, is exemplary. Our narrator is Lara, who is at her husband’s family cherry orchard with their three grown daughters, home because of the pandemic. Lara recounts her time performing at a summer theater company – and keeps to herself some of the details of her steamy summer romance with a future Hollywood heartthrob. In true Patchett fashion, the book is about intimacy, but also about secrets and the nature of the truth; about choices and roads not taken; about how during a global crisis it is okay to be happy that your kids are home. She says of the book that she set out to recreate the sense that, “in a world and a planet that is going to hell, there is still so much beauty and so much joy.”

It is always a joy to hear from Ann Patchett, and the warm, writerly connection between her and Cheryl Strayed makes this conversation particularly memorable.

Ann Patchett is the author of novels, most recently the #1 New York Times bestselling Tom Lake, works of nonfiction, and children’s books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women’s Prize in the U.K., and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was the first selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and became an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon;Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, a national best seller now the basis of the WBUR podcast Dear Sugar Radio, co-hosted with Steve Almond; and Torch, her debut novel. Her books have been translated into forty languages, and her essays and other writings have appeared in numerous publications.

In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation with author Tommy Orange from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Viet Than Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his debut novel The Sympathizer, which sold more than one million copies worldwide, catapulted him to national fame. Since then, Nguyen has gone on to publish two more books of fiction, and a work of nonfiction, Nothing Ever dies.

He joined us for the Festival on the occasion of the publication of his debut memoir A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A  Memorial. He was joined on stage by novelist Tommy Orange, who wrote the celebrated novel There, There. The two dive into a discussion about Nguyen’s new book, which is formally inventive and unusual in the sense it’s a mix of history, personal memoir, and a biography of his parents–telling an intergenerational story of a family’s forced migration from Vietnam to the United States and the deeply personal impacts this journey. With a wry and ironic sense of humor, Nguyen offers us a tender view into his family’s history; the truth, ironies, and lies behind the so-called American Dream; and how he has come to understand his role as a writer at this specific moment in American life.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Committed, which continues the story of The Sympathizer, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, alongside seven other prizes. He is also the author of the short story collection The Refugees; the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award, and his memoir A Man of Two Faces. He is also the editor of an anthology of refugee writing The Displaced. He is the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. He lives in Los Angeles.

Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.

In this episode of The Archive Project, we explore storytelling and the intersections between literature and music with our friends at the Oregon Symphony and 45th Parallel Universe. 

First, we have a conversation led by Oregon Symphony creative chair Gabriel Kahane. As part of the 2023 Portland Book Festival, Kahane spoke with one of his frequent collaborators, the poet Matthew Zapruder. The conversation centers on Zapruder’s new memoir, Story of a Poem, a beautiful book that is, indeed, the story of writing a poem, but also a very personal exploration of Zapruder’s own reactions to his son’s diagnosis with autism and his own evolution as a son, husband, and father against the backdrop of life in the Anthropocene. 

We also have a conversation between the New Yorker critic and author of The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross, with musicians Ron Blessinger, Sergio Carreno, Bora Yoon, James Shields, and Lisa Lipton of the 45th Parallel group. They explore a fascinating range of subjects throughout their conversation, including the impact of language like “classical” and the freedoms and restrictions of genre. Similarly, how the baggage of the canon can be a barrier for some people, but that what’s important ultimately about any art is your personal response.

One thing that Alex Ross said stood out as applicable to all art: He said that music is indefinite in its meaning. Meaning is rooted both in the time that the piece was created, but also when it is experienced. Which means art—be it music, literature, or storytelling—is a unique form of time travel. 

On January 26, 2024, don’t miss! The Reser & 45th Parallel Present: Listen to This: An Evening with Alex Ross. Acclaimed author and music writer Alex Ross joins the virtuosos of 45th Parallel for an evening of words and music, a unique concert experience that will entertain, edify, enlighten, and exhilarate. Alex will read from his books and essays, providing compelling context to the music that 45th Parallel then performs. This is a co-production with the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts and will be recorded for broadcast on All Classical Portland. Learn more here.

Alex Ross has been the music critic at The New Yorker since 1996. He writes about classical music, covering the field from the Metropolitan Opera to the contemporary avant-garde, and has also contributed essays on literature, history, the visual arts, film, and ecology. His first book, “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,” a cultural history of music since 1900, won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His second book, the essay collection “Listen to This,” won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. His latest book is “Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music,” an account of Wagner’s vast cultural impact. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

45th Parallel Universe is a collective of musicians who come together to celebrate great chamber music with intimate artistic experiences. Passion for great music is what defines us and Portland is our stage. Since 2009, 45th Parallel has happily demolished distinctions between old and new chamber music, bluegrass and jazz, fiddle and folk. By bringing fragmented audiences together, 45th Parallel reflects Portland’s surging creative communities in fresh and imaginative ways.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day (Copper Canyon, 2019), as well as Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and was the Editor of Best American Poetry 2022. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.

A singer-songwriter, pianist, and composer, Gabriel Kahane works at the blurred edges of journalism, ethnography, storytelling, and music. He is currently the Creative Chair of the Oregon Symphony, which commissioned his 2018 oratorio, emergency shelter intake form. Over the last decade, Gabriel has worked in an array of diverse musical spaces. Memorable projects have included tours with Andrew Bird and Punch Brothers; recordings with Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers, and Blake Mills; and an arrangement of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” written for Paul Simon’s Farewell Tour in 2018. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Carnegie Hall. Gabriel is also a regular guest on American Public Media’s Live From Here with Chris Thile.