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.

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.

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.

This episode of The Archive Project features great American author Philip Roth reading from his 1991 memoir Patrimony: A True Story. Patrimony is a true story about the relationship between a father and a son. In this masterful and tender memoir, Philip Roth watches as his 86-year-old father, famous for his vigor, his charm, and his skill as a raconteur—lovingly called ‘the Bard of Newark’—battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. Roth, full of love, anxiety and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father’s long engagement with life. In this episode, made all the more moving by recent events, Roth reads from the third chapter of the memoir, entitled “Will I Be a Zombie?”

Philip Roth has been a prolific and pre-eminent figure in 20th-century American literature since the 1960s, primarily focusing his talents on the exploration of Jewish American identity and masculinity. After a period of relative quiet in the early to mid 90s, Roth surged back into public consciousness and critical acclaim in 1997, with his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, American Pastoral. In 1998, he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House, and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction. He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005, The Plot Against America received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004.” In 2006 and 2007 Roth received PEN’s two most prestigious awards: the PEN/Nabokov Award and the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. Roth was one of only four living American novelists to have his work honored by the Library of America. In 2011, he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. Roth passed away in May 2018 at the age of 85.

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

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.

In this episode, civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson engages the Portland community in a timely conversation on culture, social justice, and politics. Drawing from his own experiences as an organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson explores the issues of the day and discusses the subtle structures and inherent biases that impact our communities. The conversation examines the core themes of Mckesson’s upcoming first book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, a meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of the Black Lives Matter movement from the front lines. Honest, courageous, and imaginative, On the Other Side of Freedom is a work brimming with hope. Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible. In this episode, Mckesson delivers a keynote about inclusion, community, and progress, followed by an onstage conversation with Lauretta Charlton, Editor of Race/Related at the New York Times.

DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist, community organizer, and the host of Crooked Media’s podcast, Pod Save the People. He started his career as an educator and came to prominence for his role in documenting the Ferguson protests and the movement they birthed and for publicly advocating for justice and accountability for the victims of police violence and the end of mass incarceration. He’s spoken at venues from the White House to the Oxford Union and universities and appeared on TV shows across the political spectrum. He was named #11 on Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders list and Harvard’s Black Man of the Year in 2016, among his many other accolades. A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and the co-founder of Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence, he lives in Baltimore, Maryland. On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope is his first book.

In this episode, Harvard professor, staff writer at The New Yorker, and New York Times bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses her newest work, These Truths: A History of the United States. Cited as the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—”these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?

“We can’t unlock the prison of the present without having a much longer view of American history.”

“We are all broadcasting, but no one is really listening. In fact, it’s impossible to listen carefully.”

Jill Lepore has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2005. Her books include The Name of War, which won the Bancroft Prize; New York Burning, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history; The Story of America, which was short-listed for the pen Literary Award for the Art of the Essay; Book of Ages, a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Her latest book, These Truths: A History of the United States, came out in September 2018. Lepore received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995 and is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. In 2012, she was named a Harvard College Professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching. [Lepore bio courtesy of The New Yorker]

In this episode, Dawn Lundy Martin, Morgan Parker, and Danez Smith discuss the intersection of race and language, and what it means to render black bodies in literature. Together, these poets explore what it means to be a black artist in America today, and what it means to represent this experience in their work. This panel is moderated by local writer and performer Béalleka.

Dawn Lundy Martin is a poet and activist whose poetry collections include Discipline (2011), winner of the Nightboat Books Prize, and A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering (2007), which was selected for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She is also the author of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life (2015) and Good Stock, Strange Blood (2017). With Vivien Labaton, Martin coedited The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (2004). She also cofounded both the Third Wave Foundation and the Black Took Collective. She has received the Academy of American Arts and Science’s May Sarton Prize for Poetry and has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, The New School, and Bard College.

Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (2017) and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (2015). Her third collection of poems, Magical Negro, will be published by Tin House in 2019, and her debut book of nonfiction will be published later that year by One World, an imprint of Random House. Her poetry and essays have been published and anthologized in numerous publications, including The Paris Review, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Best American Poetry 2016,  The New York Times, and The Nation. Parker is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. She is the creator and host of Reparations, Live! at the Ace Hotel in New York. With Tommy Pico, she co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series, and with Angel Nafis, she is The Other Black Girl Collective.

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (2017), a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award & the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013) and black movie (2015), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Danez’s work has been featured widely including in The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

In this episode of The Archive Project, Omar El Akkad, Benjamin Percy, and Lidia Yuknavitch discuss their newest works in a conversation titled “Resistance and Rebellion: Dystopian Fiction” at the 2017 Portland Book Festival. El Akkad’s début novel American War imagines an American landscape devastated by its second Civil War and tells the story of the young woman who carries the war-torn country’s fate. Benjamin Percy’s Dark Net is set in contemporary Portland, where a group of misfits must work together to stop Internet demons from spreading virally into the real world. Set in the year 2049, Lidia Yuknavitch’s Book of Joan follows the eponymous child-rebel Joan of Arc as she fights for humankind on an Earth ravaged by climate change. They discuss the inspiration for and execution of their boundary-pushing new works. Drawing on some of today’s most pressing issues, these authors create poignant images of a not-so-distant future.

Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Doha, Qatar until he moved to Canada with his family. He is an award-winning journalist and author who has traveled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. He is a recipient of Canada’s National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Benjamin Percy has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the author of the novels The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding, two story collections, and an essay collection, Thrill Me. He also writes the Green Arrow and Teen Titans series for DC Comics. He lives in Minnesota with his family.

Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the National Bestselling novel The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award’s Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, as well as the Reader’s Choice Award; the novel Dora: A Headcase; and three books of short stories. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader’s Choice. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches Women’s Studies, Film Studies, Writing, and Literature. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon. She lives in Oregon with her husband Andy Mingo and their renaissance man son, Miles. She is a very good swimmer.