The Archive Project

Pretend boyfriends, arranged marriages, getting photographed by the paparazzi? These YA novelists don’t write your typical love stories. In Sandhya Menon’s When Dimple Met Rishi, two first-generation Indian-American teens are set up by their parents in an arranged marriage, but the plans backfire when they are paired up at the same coding camp. In Zan Romanoff’s Grace and the Fever, Grace is swept up in the world of the boy band she secretly loves and struggles to keep up her double life as she learns what really happens behind the scenes. In Jenny Han’s Always and Forever, Lara Jean, Lara Jean Song heads into her senior year looking forward to prom with Peter, who was her pretend boyfriend but now is her real boyfriend, and college, when some unexpected news forces her to rethink all of her plans. Moderated by Brendan Kiely (The Last True Love Story). 

“What’s more exciting than the possibility of a heart expanding?” – Brendan Kiely

“With contemporary, realistic stories, when it’s something romantic, you have to find some sort of tension to make the story really sing. You have to make the emotions feel super real, super poignant and grounded. It’s very difficult to make things feel high-stakes, life and death when it’s not literally life and death, so you have to find a way to make that impact.” – Zan Romanoff

“For me as a debut novelist, it has been about more than just writing or seeing my book on the bookshelf. It’s been about reaching people who might not have seen themselves on the cover or in the story before.” – Sandhya Menon

Jenny Han is the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series; Shug; the Burn for Burn trilogy, cowritten with Siobhan Vivian; and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You. She is also the author of the chapter book Clara Lee and The Apple Pie Dream. A former children’s bookseller, she earned her MFA in creative writing at the New School.

Sandhya Menon is the New York Times bestselling author of the smash-hit When Dimple Met Rishi and From Twinkle, with Love. She was born and raised in India on a steady diet of Bollywood movies and street food, and blames this upbringing for her obsession with happily-ever-afters, bad dance moves, and pani puri. Now she lives in Colorado, where she’s on a mission to (gently) coerce her husband and children watch all 3,220 Bollywood movies she claims as her favorite.

Zan Romanoff fell in love with Hanson when she was ten and has been a boy-band fanatic and teen-idol obsessive ever since. Romanoff’s non-fiction has been featured in The Awl, Buzzfeed, Elle, GQ, Lucky Peach, The Paris Review Daily, Racked, and Rolling Stone among other publications. She lives and writes in Los Angeles; Grace and the Fever is her second novel.

This episode features internationally acclaimed and award-winning writer Michael Ondaatje reading primarily from his canon of poetry. Spanning decades and continents, Ondaatje’s work gives a glimpse into a poetic mind turned novelist. This reading crosses the globe, jumping from Ondaatje’s native Colombo, Sri Lanka to his eventual home in Toronto, Canada. A skilled reader in addition to his poetic abilities, this reading truly transports the listener to those precious moments that have inspired Ondaatje’s career.

Michael Ondaatje is the author of several award-winning novels, as well as a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry including, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems (1981), which won the Canadian Governor General’s Award in 1971; The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting: Poems (1998). Among other accolades, his novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize, and Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife, Linda Spalding, with whom he edits the literary journal Brick. His recent novels include The Cat’s Table (2011) and Warlight (2018).

How do we create art from our own wounds and wonders? In their poetry, memoirs, and essays, writers Kaveh Akbar, Melissa Febos, and Megan Stielstra reckon with personal trauma and healing. Tracking the joys and pains of the path through addiction, and wrestling with desire, inheritance and faith, Calling a Wolf a Wolf is the darkly sumptuous debut from award-winning poet Kaveh Akbar. His are powerful, intimate poems of thirst: for alcohol, for other bodies, for knowledge and for life. In her memoir Abandon Me, Melissa Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection—with family, lovers, and oneself. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures a mutual abandonment to passion and obsession—and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another. In her poignant and inciting collection of literary essays, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, Megan Stielstra tells stories to ward off fears both personal and universal as she grapples toward a better way to live. Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. These three authors discuss life and art with moderator Marisa Siegel, editor-in-chief of The Rumpus. Kaveh Akbar’s appearance is in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.

Biography:

Kaveh Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Kaveh has also served as Poetry Editor for BOOTH and Book Reviews Editor for the Southeast Review. Along with Gabrielle Calvocoressi, francine j. harris, and Jonathan Farmer, he starred on All Up in Your Ears, a monthly poetry podcast. The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently and currently teaches at Purdue University and in the low residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoirs Whip Smart and Abandon Me. Her essays have appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Lenny Letter, and elsewhere. Portions from Abandon Me have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, and twice earned notice in the 2015 Best American Essays anthology. The recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Febos serves on the directorial board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is an assistant professor of creative writing at Monmouth University. She lives in Brooklyn.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: The Wrong Way To Save Your Life, Once I Was Cool, and Everyone Remain Calm. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, Poets & Writers, Longreads, Tin House, Guernica, Catapult, Lit Hub, Buzzfeed Reader, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, Radio National Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Goodman Theatre, the Neo-Futurarium, and regularly with The Paper Machete live news magazine at The Green Mill. She is currently an artist in residence at Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago with her husband, their kid, and two dogs.

This episode features acclaimed chef and food writer Ruth Reichl as she discusses her rise to fame, the intersection of food and storytelling, and the future of fine dining. Reichl deftly illustrates her own trajectory through the food world, beginning in the Berkeley, CA culinary revolution of the 1970s, through her time as a disguise-donning food critic for the New York Times, to the publication of her first novel Delicious!. But beyond the fancy food, Reichl’s story is about a journey towards self-discovery and the ways in which food connects us all.

An acclaimed chef and food writer, Ruth Reichl served as a restaurant critic for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and was Gourmet magazine’s editor-in-chief for ten years. As the co-owner of The Swallow Restaurant during the mid 70s, Reichl was also part of the culinary revolution that took place in Berkeley, California. In pursuit of her goal to demystify the world of fine cuisine, Reichl has been praised for her honest writing, including her examination of the sexism experienced by women at restaurants and the pretentious nature of many of New York’s dining establishments. Her books include Tender at the Bone; Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires; and For You Mom, Finally—which have collectively been translated into 18 languages. Her latest publication and first novel, Delicious!, was published by Random House in 2014. The recipient of 6 James Beard Awards, Reichl is currently the executive producer of PBS’s Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, the host of PBS’s Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth, a judge on Top Chef Masters, and the culinary editor for the Modern Library Food Series.

In this episode of The Archive Project, we celebrate Portland’s creative youth during our sixth 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. 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 2017 competition.

“I always fluctuate back and forth between how much I loathe poetry and how much I love it. But one thing I don’t swing back and forth about is how much I love young folks being introduced to poetry, and writing it, and finding their voice through it.” —Anis Mojgani

This episode also features an extended interview with Anis Mojgani, the host of Verselandia! 2017. Mojgani is a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam. He is the author of three poetry collections—Songs from Under the River, The Feather Room, and Over the Anvil We Stretch—and a fully illustrated poetry memoir, The PocketKnife Bible.

In this episode of The Archive Project, author Mohsin Hamid discusses the themes in his novel Exit West, Multnomah County Library’s 2018 Everybody Reads selection.

About Exit West: Shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, Exit West tells the story of Nadia and Saeed, who begin their love affair against an increasingly unsettling backdrop of unrest and violence. As the city turns into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, the couple begins to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. This timely novel examines the global refugee crisis with a twist of magic realism, showing us that we are all migrants through time.

Mohsin Hamid is a Pakistani writer. He is the author of four novels, Moth Smoke (2000), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), and Exit West (2017), as well as a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations (2014). His writing has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West), shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award (Moth Smoke), selected as winner or finalist of twenty awards, and translated into thirty-five languages.

Everybody Reads is a community reading project of Multnomah County Library made possible in part by gifts to The Library Foundation. The Everybody Reads program celebrates the power of books in creating a stronger community through a shared reading experience. Literary Arts is proud to partner with Multnomah County Library and The Library Foundation on the culminating event of this truly inspiring program.

This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single event during Lit Crawl Portland 2017. 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 cohosted by De-Canon: A Visibility Project, White Noise, and YesYes Books, and showcasing poets Nabila Lovelace, Alyssa Ogi, Danez Smith, and Mahogany Browne. In the second segment, Elena Passarello reads from and discusses her essay on Twin Peaks nostalgia in the anthology Little Boxes: Twelve Writers on Television. And in the final segment, Deb Olin Unferth and Elizabeth Haidle discuss the near symbiotic process that produced their darkly humorous graphic novel I, Parrot. 

Mahogany Browne is a Cave Canem, Poets House, and Serenbe Focus alum and the author of several books including Redbone (nominated for NAACP Outstanding Literary Works) and Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line. 

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 Washington Square Review, Day One, Winter Tangerine Hands Up Don’t Shoot edition.

Alyssa Ogi writes and teaches in Portland, OR. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and her recent poetry can be found in Best New Poets 2017, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals.

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award & the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. 

Elena Passarello is an actor, writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. Her essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have been published in Oxford American, Slate, Creative Nonfiction, and The Iowa Review, among other publications. 

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of four books, including Wait Till You See Me Dance and Revolution, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, and Tin House.

Elizabeth Haidle is a freelance artist based in Portland, Oregon. She is the creative director and regular contributor at Illustoria magazine, while writing and illustrating a nonfiction graphic novel series and raising her teenage son.

In this episode of The Archive Project, bestselling authors Maile Meloy and Claire Messud discuss their 2017 new releases. Their books examine psychological mysteries where children go missing and painful truths are revealed in crisis, and that explore the spaces between childhood innocence and the hard realities of adulthood. In Maile Meloy’s Do Not Become Alarmed, the children go missing while two families are vacationing in Latin America, sending the parents into panic and forcing the children to discover untapped resourcefulness. In The Burning Girl, Claire Messud explores the intense bond and break of a girlhood friendship, questioning how well we can ever know even the people we are closest to—or ourselves. This conversation is moderated by John Freeman, editor of Freeman’s.

Maile Meloy is the author of the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter; the short story collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (named one of the “10 Best Books of 2009” by the New York Times Book Review); and a bestselling middle-grade trilogy. Her fiction has won the Paris Review‘s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Meloy was shortlisted for the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction and chosen as one of Granta‘s Best Young American Novelists.

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers The Emperor’s Children and The Burning Girl, which was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her most recent book is the essay collection Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. A recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.

John Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s, a literary annual published by Grove Press. He has written several books of nonfiction including, How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as two collections of poems, Maps and The Park. The former editor of Granta, he is now Artist-in-Residence at NYU and executive editor of The Literary Hub. Between 2014 and 2020, he edited a series of anthologies on inequality, concluding with Tales of Two Planets, which focuses on the climate crisis and global inequality. Freeman’s work has been translated into more than 20 languages and appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Zyzzyva. He lives in London.