The Archive Project

Portland-based journalists and researchers, David Wolman and Julian Smith, discuss their new nonfiction book Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World’s Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West. Aloha Rodeo brings to light the story of how, in 1908, three of Hawaii’s most revered paniolo (cowboys) journeyed 4,000 miles to Wyoming to compete in the world’s greatest rodeo, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and returned home champions and American legends. Wolman and Smith were interviewed by Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts, in a live event at Powell’s Books. In their discussion, we hear about Hawaii’s cattle wrangling history, the islands’ vibrant culture and industry, and explore why this incredible story has been left out of mainstream American history and the importance of sharing it now.

“It’s always the time to reveal hidden stories or stories that have been lost to people. And now more than ever I think we need these kinds of stories because of the very plain truth that diversity makes us better and makes our stories better.”

David Wolman is a Contributing Editor at Outside and a longtime contributor at Wired. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Nature, and many other publications, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. David is the author of The End of Money, Righting the Mother Tongue, and A Left-Hand Turn Around the World. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his family.

Julian Smith writes about science, adventure, and history for Smithsonian, Wired, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Traveler, The Washington Post, and other publications. He is the author of Crossing the Heart of Africa, which won the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award and a Banff Mountain Book Award, and is the coauthor of Smokejumper. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his family.

“The thing that we really hope people come away with is the idea that history is a lot more complex than we usually think. In the narrative of the American West—and Hawaii, too—it’s natural to want to simplify these stories. Clear good guys, clear bad guys, a certain string of events. But once you start digging into it, you find how much more complex and rich it is.”

Three contemporary poets—Shayla Lawson, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Jane Wong—share their poetry and discuss their work and inspirations. In 2018, Literary Arts hosted a free reading series called Poets on Broadway, in collaboration with Portland’5 Centers for the Arts, in the Antoinette Hatfield Hall in downtown Portland. This episode features recordings from those events, with Lawson sharing selections from her book of poetry I Think I’m Ready to Meet Frank Ocean, Adams-Santos from Swarm Queen’s Crown, and Wong from Overpour.

Shayla Lawson is the author of three books of poetry—A Speed Education in Human Being, the chapbook PANTONE, AND I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean—and the forthcoming essay collection MAJOR: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, & Being Dope {AF} (Harper Perennial, 2020). Her work has appeared in print and online at Tin House, GRAMMA, ESPN, Salon, The Offing, Guernica, Colorado Review, Barrelhouse, and MiPOesias. She curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Lawson currently serves as Writer-in-Residence and Chair of Creative Writing at Amherst College.

Stephanie Adams-Santos is a multidisciplinary Guatemalan-American writer and educator whose work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and hybrid genres. Her full-length poetry collection, Swarm Queen’s Crown (Fathom Books, 2016) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrates excellence in LGBTQ voices. She is also the author of Total Memory, Little Fugues, and the award-winning chapbook The Sundering, selected for a New York Chapbook Fellowship. Stephanie has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and was a finalist for a Corporeal Voices fellowship for Writers of Color. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals and magazines, including Guernica, The Boston Review, Orion Magazine, and others. 

Jane Wong is the author of Overpour and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Books, 2021). Wong’s poems can be found in places such as Best American Poetry 2015, American Poetry Review, POETRY, AGNI, Third Coast, New England Review, and others. Her essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, 4Culture, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Willapa Bay AiR, Hedgebrook, the Jentel Foundation, SAFTA, and Mineral School.

Deadly Magic: Vengeance, Justice, and Destiny – a discussion on fantasy writing and craft from the 2018 Portland Book Festival. Secrets, magic, and extraordinary powers run through two fantastical YA series. Marissa Meyer, author of the Lunar Chronicles, presents a new world in the Renegades series. Book two, Archenemies, finds Nova, our heroine, confronted with the possible destruction of Gatlon City and the world as she knows it. In Tochi Onyebuchi’s debut series, Beasts Made of Night, a young man, Taj, finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy. The sequel, Crown of Thunder, has Taj on the run and questioning his true identity. Moderated by Alicia Tate of Multnomah County Library.

“I would read a lot of science fiction and fantasy growing up, but I didn’t see anybody who looked like me having these adventures, or falling in love, or saving the day. And to be able to see that in a book now, I think, is part of that relief [found in reading fantasy]. Because you’re living in this world that’s taking every opportunity to tell you that you don’t matter, but then you can crack open this book and you can see that you’re the love interest, like somebody who looks like you is the love interest, somebody who looks like you is the hero. That’s a very important element [of writing] for me.” – Onyebuchi

Marissa Meyer is the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lunar Chronicles series, as well as the Wires and Nerve graphic novels and The Lunar Chronicles Coloring Book. Her first stand-alone novel, Heartless, was also a #1 New York Times bestseller. She visited the Portland Book Festival with Archenemies, the fiercely awaited second installment of her Renegade Trilogy, after the New York Times-bestselling Renegades.

Tochi Onyebuchi holds a BA from Yale, an MFA in screenwriting from Tisch, a master’s degree in global economic law from L’institut d’études politiques, and a JD from Columbia Law School. His writing has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Ideomancer, among other places. His most recent book is Crown of Thunder (Beasts Made of Night #2). Tochi resides in Connecticut, where he works in the tech industry.

Alicia Tate is a Multnomah County librarian with a focus on teen librarianship. Alicia graduated from the Information School at the University of Washington. As a member of the My Librarian service at the Multnomah County Library, she offers reading recommendations focused on YA fiction and graphic novels, especially in the genres of horror and scientific fiction.

Israeli writer Amos Oz discusses Israeli Literature, Hebrew as a spoken and written language, the influence of the Holocaust on literature, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

I love Israel, even at times that I don’t like it. In fact, I love Israel even at times that I cannot stand it. And Israel, as I’m sure you know, ladies and gentlemen, Israel is neither a country, nor a nation. Actually, it is a fiery collection of arguments. A noisy assembly of 5.6 million citizens, 5.6 million Prime Ministers, 5.6 million prophets and Messiahs, each with his or her own personal formula for instant redemption.”

Amos Oz, born Amos Klausner, was a novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work examined Israeli culture. Educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Oxford, Oz served in the Israeli army during three separate stints and joined the Israeli peace movement following the Six-Day War in 1967. It was at this time that he began advocating for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Oz’s fiction combines realism with irony, resulting in a critical, unapologetic tone. He credited Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio with his choice to write about his own experiences and point of view. “The written world,” he wrote in his memoir, “always revolves around the hand that is writing, wherever it happens to be writing: where you are is the center of the universe.” Oz published 40 works of fiction and nonfiction, had his work translated into 45 languages, and won literary prizes from around the world. Oz passed away in December, 2018.

“I know the word compromise has a terrible reputation in English, especially on the West Coast. This is the place of idealists, and they regard compromise as lack of principles, lack of backbone, lack of integrity, lack of devotion, lack of everything. Let me tell you, in my vocabulary, the word compromise is synonymous to the word life itself. And the opposite of compromise is not integrity, and the opposite of compromise is not idealism—the opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death. Where there is life, there is compromise. Compromise, not capitulation.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

In this episode of The Archive Project, former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses the past, present, and future state of the world in the context of climate change. He supports his argument for the need for societal and policy change with extensive scientific research and discusses the merits of various alternative energy resources. He focuses the latter half of his lecture on emphasizing the need to prepare and assist the next generation with the climate challenges ahead.

It is possible to make the choice to shift away from a source of energy on which we now depend that is dirty, polluting, vulnerable, going to be in short supply, very expensive, and connected to national security concerns to a new source of energy that is based on fuel that is free forever.

Former Vice President Al Gore is the cofounder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, and the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis. Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.

He is the author of the #1 New York Times best-sellers An Inconvenient Truth and The Assault on Reason, and the best-sellers Earth in the Balance, Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, and most recently, the New York Times best-seller An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.

He is the subject of the documentary movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won two Oscars in 2006 — and a second documentary in 2017, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. In 2007, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”

Jesmyn Ward is the author of the National Book Award-winning novels Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir Men We Reaped. Ward is in conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson, Whiting Award-winner, native Portlander, and author of the novel The Residue Years and nonfiction book Survival Math (forthcoming 2019). Both Ward and Jackson address the uncomfortable realities of the black experience in America in their work. In this conversation between real-life friends and colleagues, Ward and Jackson seriously discuss the issues of systemic racism, poverty, and violence that are central to their works. Despite the weight of these topics, the intimacy and comfort between the authors creates a light and even humorous discussion. In this episode, Ward and Jackson invite us not only to think, but to laugh with them as well.

Jesmyn Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner, a MacArthur Genius, and a recipient of the Strauss Living Award. She is the author of Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, Men We Reaped, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, and editor of The Fire This Time. She teaches creative writing at Tulane University.

Whiting Award winner Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Jackson’s honors include fellowships from Lannan Foundation, Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, NYFA, and The Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and Tin House. His newest is the nonfiction book Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of writing in Liberal Studies at New York University.

In March 2019, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joined thousands of book-lovers for the culminating lecture of the Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program. Starting in January, readers across the county took part in reading and discussing Adichie’s novel Americanah and her book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists. In this episode, Adichie discusses her journey as a writer—from her earliest memories in her hometown of Nsukka, Nigeria to her American college experiences and beyond. Throughout her story, at least one thing is constant: a persistent hunger for and desire to create literature that celebrates the stories of the unsung, to reach a higher, clearer truth through fiction. Adichie is at once an impressive artist and a disarming speaker, imbuing even the sternest of lessons with wit and warmth. Tender and honest, Adichie’s words are sure to resonate with readers, writers, feminists, and dreamers of all ages and persuasions.

A Nigerian-born artist whose influence spans continents and genres, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has received worldwide acclaim as an author, poet, playwright, and speaker. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and her work has been recognized with the O. Henry Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction), and the PEN Pinter Prize, among many other distinctions.

Adichie is the author of three novels, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah; a short story collection, The Thing around Your Neck; the essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014, based on a widely viewed talk at TEDxEuston in 2012); and Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

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.