The Archive Project

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.

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.

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.

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 [email protected].

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.

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

This humorous and personal conversation between renowned actor Tom Hanks and Parul Sehgal, book critic for the New York Times, was from the Portland Book Festival in 2018. The Portland Book Festival 2019 line up 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/what-we-do/pdxbookfest/

About the book: A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A World War II veteran grappling with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. Four friends traveling to the moon in a rocket ship built in the backyard. These are just some of the stories that Tom Hanks captures in his first work of fiction: a collection of shorts that explore—with great affection, humor, and insight—the human condition in all its foibles. The stories are linked by one thing: in each of them, a typewriter plays a part, sometimes minor, sometimes central. 

To many, typewriters represent a level of craftsmanship, beauty, and individuality that is harder and harder to find in the modern world. In these stories, Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level. By turns whimsical, witty, and moving, Uncommon Type establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction.

Tom Hanks has been an actor, screenwriter, director and, through Playtone, a producer.  His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. Uncommon Type is his first collection of fiction.

What is my story, and what is not my story? Jacqueline Woodson, acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for children and young adults, broaches this question in her 2019 lecture in Portland, Oregon. A highly personable and conversational Woodson discusses how her passion for writing began and grew from a young age. Through recollections from her own life and stories from her family’s history, she shares how her past has shaped her writing craft and career. Woodson recites excerpts from a selection of her works—including her Newbery Honor-winning picture book, Show Way, and her National Book Award-winning memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming—and speaks to the importance of gathering people together to have tough conversations in an increasingly polarized world.

“One thing that’s so great about literature is that it is a way of getting people together and gathering around a narrative—or gathering around a writer—to have conversations that we might not otherwise have had.”

“A long time ago, I realized I was no longer writing for Jacqueline Woodson. I was writing for the people who had historically not seen themselves in literature, and for the people who were too scared to make that leap and meet someone outside of their own existences.”

“This is what living is and what writing realistic fiction is, right? It’s the highs and lows of our every day. It’s the stuff that makes us laugh, and it’s the stuff that makes us cry. It’s the stuff that makes us think, and it’s the stuff that we sometimes don’t want to think about.”

“Life is too short to finish a book you don’t love.”

Jacqueline Woodson is the 2014 National Book Award Winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Honor Award. She is also the author of New York Times bestselling novel Another Brooklyn, which was a 2016 National Book Award Finalist and Woodson’s first adult novel in twenty years. In 2015, Woodson was named Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Most recently, she was named the 2018 Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress. Woodson’s latest book is Harbor Me and the picture book The Day You Begin, both published in 2018. In 2019, she will publish Red at the Bone.

In this episode, we hear one of Oregon’s most celebrated authors, Barry Lopez, discuss his latest book of nonfiction called Horizon with Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts. The two discuss the themes behind his book, including the environmental crisis at hand. Pulling from 30 years of lived experience, Horizon defies category. It is not merely travel, science, or nature writing. It is not only a memoir, or a book of natural history. Within the book’s nearly 600 pages, Lopez explores the six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to the ice shelves of Antarctica. As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez probes the long history of humanity’s quests and explorations. This work challenges Lopez to answer his own question: “Having seen so many parts of the world, what had I learned about human menace, human triumph, and human failure?” Lopez reads passages from the book while also weaving anecdotes about his decades of fieldwork. He leaves us with an urgent call to take ownership of the health and the future of our world and its inhabitants.

Barry Lopez is the author of Arctic Dreams, for which he received a National Book Award and an Oregon Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist; and eight works of fiction, including Light Action in the Caribbean and Resistance, which also won Oregon Book Awards.

In this episode of The Archive Project, we celebrate Portland’s creative youth during the seventh annual Verselandia! poetry slam. This city-wide event features students from Parkrose, Roosevelt, Metropolitan Learning Center, Benson, Lincoln, Gresham, Sam Barlow, Franklin, Madison, Wilson, Jefferson, Grant, and Cleveland high schools competing for poetic glory. Verselandia! is the Grand Slam for the winners from individual school slams hosted by public high school library media specialists. This episode features a small selection of performances from the 2018 competition, emceed by Portland’s own Anis Mojgani.

Content warning: This episode contains strong language and adult themes. Discretion is advised

Anis Mojgani is the author of five books of poetry. His work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in journals Bat City Review, Rattle, Buzzfeed Reader, Thrush, and Forklift Ohio, amongst others. A two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis has done commissioned work for the Getty Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Portland Timbers, and has been awarded artist residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, AIR Serenbe, and the Bloedel Nature Reserve. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Portland, OR, where he serves on the Board of Directors for Literary Arts. His latest book is In the Pockets of Small Gods. Visit him online at thepianofarm.com.