The Archive Project

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, three short story collections and several works of nonfiction. He has written countless articles, plays, an opera libretto and a collection of poetry, and been a finalist for the Booker Prize multiple times He is perhaps best known for his novel Brooklyn, which was made into a movie that was nominated for three Oscars. Set in the middle of the 20th century, Brooklyn is about Eilis Lacey who leaves her small town in Ireland for New York. After building a life there, she is drawn back home and has to choose where she wants to forge her future. Tóibín opens his lecture with the moment of his father's wake in his childhood home in which he hears, as a child, the real life story that would later inspire his character of Elis Lacey. From there, Tóibín's talk is a captivating story of all of his stories, and a kind of master class for writing a novel. He is a writer known for rendering the quiet intimacies between characters, revealing powerful emotional undercurrents and their deep longings.  He is a writer who makes you care about the tiny details of a life – the buttons on a coat or the emotional reverberations of a silence. In this talk, he illuminates his craft, and pulls the curtain back on how his own life shaped his most famous novels. Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize. He was also awarded the Bodley Medal, the Würth Prize for European Literature, and the Prix Femina spécial for his body of work.

If you like Heated Rivalry – if you don't, you're the only one, but anyway – if you like Heated Rivalry and want more queer romance but wish it had more wine, we've got the books for you. This week's conversation is features queer romance at the 2025 Portland Book Festival, with authors Jasmine Guillory, Adib Khorram, and moderator Anita Kelly. Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of  Drunk on Love, The Wedding Date, and The Proposal. A frequent contributor to The Today Show, she was at the festival for her first queer romance, Flirting Lessons. Adib Khorram is the author of I'll Have What He's Having and YA novel Darius The Great Is Not Okay. He serves on the board of directors for Authors Against Book Bans. He was at the festival for his adult romance book is It Had To Be Him. The event is moderated by Portland author Anita Kelly, author of How You Get The Girl and Donut Summer. Both books, Flirting Lessons and It Had To Be Him, involve escape – to Napa and to Milan, respectively – and the authors talk about the arduous research process of drinking a lot of wine. Jasmine speaks about writing a book as a way to learn about something she's curious about – in her case the wine business and living in what is thought of as a tourist town, like Napa. And Adib describes a rosé-fueled semi-spontaneous trip to Italy for eight weeks, and how the pursuit of joy inspired his process. Romance is hot right now, and the conversation is very fun, but a heads up that it is a spicy conversation! There are a few bleeps, and portions might not for all ages or all ears. The episode includes content that might not be suitable for all audiences – and it’s unbleeped! Listener discretion is advised. Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author. Her novels include Drunk on Love, The Wedding Date, the Reese’s Book Club selection The Proposal. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time. Jasmine is a frequent book contributor on the Today show. She lives in Oakland, California. Adib Khorram is the queer Iranian author of I'll Have What He's Having, which was an instant USA Today bestseller. He is also the author of the young adult novel Darius the Great Is Not Okay, which earned the William C. Morris Debut Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature, and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Best YA Novels of All Time; his other young adult novels Darius the Great Deserves Better, Kiss & Tell, and The Breakup Lists as well as the picture books Seven Special Somethings: A Nowruz Story and Bijan Always Wins, have garnered critical acclaim, starred reviews, and bestsellers. He grew up in Kansas City—the Milan of the Midwest—but he'd rather be in the real thing, sitting on a patio, enjoying an aperitivo. Originally from a small town in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, Anita Kelly now lives in the Pacific Northwest with their family. An educator by day, they write romance that celebrates queer love in all its infinite possibilities. They hope you get to pet a dog today

In 2016 Tara Roberts was living in Washington DC feeling, in a new way, the deep fractures in America, including the way we understand our history.  She felt called to be part of trying to heal these divisions.   It was a chance encounter with a photograph at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that changed the trajectory of her life.  It was of a group of Black women on a boat in diving gear who she quickly discovered  were from an organization called Diving with a Purpose, an underwater archeology group with a mission to discover and document the wreckage of slave ships scattered on the ocean floor around the world, and by doing so recover a crucial part of history. Roberts soon quit her job and joined the group to document their work, learning to scuba dive in order to do so. She turned that journey into an award-winning National Geographic-produced podcast called “Into the Depths” and became the first Black female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of National Geographic Magazine.  This work also resulted in a memoir Written in the Waters which both invites us into the fascinating and groundbreaking work below the surface of the Ocean around the globe, and her own personal transformation. Roberts has travelled the world as a diver, backpacker, and adventurer,  bringing to this conversation a global view of history and culture, and a devotion to tell the stories that can bring us together.  She is currently Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Here's Tara Roberts in conversation with Shayna Schlosberg from the 2025 Portland Book Festival, on Literary Arts, the Archive Project. Tara Roberts spent the last six years following, diving with, and telling stories about Black scuba divers as they searched for and helped document slave shipwrecks around the world. Her journey was turned into an award-winning National Geographic-produced podcast called “Into the Depths” and featured in the March issue of National Geographic magazine. Tara became the first Black female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of Nat Geo. In 2022, Tara was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year. Currently, she is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. And her book Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home and Belonging hits stands in January 2025. Tara also worked as an editor for magazines like CosmoGirl, Essence, EBONY and Heart & Soul and edited several books for girls. She was a Fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. She founded her own magazine for women who are ‘too bold for boundaries..’ And Tara spent an amazing year backpacking around the world to find and tell stories about young women change agents. The journey led to the creation of a nonprofit that supported and funded their big ideas. Shayna Schlosberg is the Vice President of Community Connections at OPB and KMHD, where she leads initiatives to ensure that both organizations authentically reflect and serve the diverse communities of the Pacific Northwest. In this role, she shapes and drives the strategy, vision, and implementation of community representation and inclusion across all aspects of OPB and KMHD's work. Shayna joined OPB and KMHD in 2022. Prior to that, she was the Director of Operations and Strategy at Women of Color in the Arts, a national service organization committed to advancing racial and cultural equity in the performing arts. From 2017 to 2021, she served as Managing Director of The Catastrophic Theatre, an acclaimed experimental theater company in Houston, Texas. Before that, she was Associate General Manager at the Alley Theatre, where she played a key role in expanding the theater's international programming, particularly through partnerships with Latin American artists and companies. Shayna's expertise has been recognized nationally—she has served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a graduate of several leadership programs, including the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture's Advocacy Leadership Institute, Women of Color in the Arts' Leadership Through Mentorship program, and the 2020 New Leaders Council Fellowship. She was also a founding advisory committee member of the Houston BIPOC Arts Network Fund, a groundbreaking effort born out of the Ford Foundation's America's Cultural Treasures initiative. Shayna served in the Peace Corps in Armenia from 2010 to 2012.

Baldwin was key figure in the American civil rights movement of the last 1960s, and he is one of our most important American writers. Author of the novels If Beale Street Could Talk, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and Giovanni's Room, he was also an essayist, poet, and playwright. Baldwin's influence continues to grow, but even if you've never read a word James Baldwin has written – first, you should – you will find something to treasure in this conversation. Boggs's biography centers on the artistic and intimate relationships that informed Baldwin's life and work. Douglas Brinkley, author of Rosa Parks: A Life, said “Nicholas Boggs's meticulously researched and passionately written Baldwin is the crown jewel of the ongoing James Baldwin revival. … this epic biography captures Baldwin in full.” Our interviewer is Mitchell S. Jackson, author of The Residue Years, Survival Math, and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Jackson is one of the best interviewers — I genuinely think he should have his own talk show — and he brings so much care and curiosity to the conversation. We start with a passage from the audiobook, which is published by Macmillan Audio and read by Ron Butler. Nicholas Boggs is a writer and independent scholar, born and raised in Washington, DC, now living in Brooklyn, New York. He rediscovered and coedited a new edition of James Baldwin's out-of-print collaboration with the French artist Yoran Cazac, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (2018), and his writing has been anthologized in The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin. He received his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from American University, and his PhD in English from Columbia. Baldwin: A Love Story is Nicholas Boggs’ debut novel. Mitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson is the critically acclaimed author of The Residue Years, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, and John of Watts (to be published soon). His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Time, Esquire, and Marie Claire, as well as in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Jackson's nonfiction book Survival Math was published in 2019 and named a best book of the year by fifteen publications, including NPR, Time, The Paris Review, The Root, Kirkus Reviews, and Buzzfeed. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, covers race and culture as the first Black columnist in the history of Esquire, and serves as the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the English Department of Arizona State University.

We're back at the 2025 Portland Book Festival this week, with poets m. mick powell and Taylor Byas, and moderater Jae Nichelle.   Taylor Byas's second collection, Resting Bitch Face, uses watching and surveillance to explore Black female subjectivity. Byas engages with multiple art forms — painting, film, sculpture, and photographs – to explore the perspectives of artist and muse, of watcher and watched.   Taylor is in conversation with m. mick powell, whose debut poetry collection Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Stroy in Poems features of chorus of pop stars – Aaliyah, Whitney Houston, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, and more – in an exploration of grief, sexuality, and celebrity. Powell refers to the collection as a documentary, and it includes imagery, speculative verse, and more.   Poet Jae Nichelle leads a conversation that starts from the prompt “pop culture poetry.” Engaging with pop culture, as these collections do, is an act of engaging with the cultural moment. Done well, it doesn't “date” the work, but creates a time capsule – a documentary. Both collections are deeply researched, and Taylor and mick discuss their relationships to art, scholarship, and commerce, and the interplay between those different aspects of publishing this particular collections.    In the conversation, first we'll hear m. mick powell read the title poem of their debut collection, Dead Girl Cameo, followed by a reading by Taylor Byas of the title poem of Resting Bitch Face and then a conversation between mick, Taylor, and the moderator, Jae.   A heads up – there's some mature language that may not be appropriate for all listeners, and you'll hear some bleeps in the opening poem.    Taylor Byas is an award-winning poet and a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the CHIRBy Award, and the BCALA Best Poetry Honor. m mick powell is a queer Black Cabo Verdean femme, poet, artist, Aries, and the author of DEAD GIRL CAMEO (One World Books, 2025) and threesome in the last Toyota Celica & other circus tricks, winner of the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize. An assistant professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut, mick enjoys chasing waterfalls and being in love.  Louisiana-born Jae Nichelle (she/her) is the author of God Themselves (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary) (YesYes Books, 2019). She was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and won the inaugural John Lewis Writing Award in poetry from the Georgia Writers Association. Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020 (University of Virginia Press, 2020), the Washington Square Review, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She believes in all of our collective ability to contribute to radical change. 

In this episode, we feature the beloved Irish novelist Emma Donoghue, in conversation with OPB's Crystal Ligori, from the 2025 Portland Book Festival.  

Join us for a conversation from Portland Book Festival with authors Omar El Akkad and Karen Russell, moderated by Willamette Week's arts and culture editor Rachel Saslow.

Barbara Kingsolver discusses her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead, with Jess Walter at this live event in Portland, Oregon.

Authors Michelle Ruiz Keil and Juhea Kim discuss Ursula K. Le Guin's legacy through exploration of pacifism and environmentalism in her works.

Update your TBR list: 2025 Portland Book Festival authors recommend some of their favorite writers and titles featured at the event.

Tommy Orange shares his non-linear journey to becoming a writer and the inspiration behind his award-winning debut novel, There There.

In this episode of The Archive Project, author Salman Rushdie reads from and discusses his 1999 novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

Tune into this conversation from the 2025 Portland Book Festival featuring author Angela Flournoy in conversation with author Renée Watson.

In this episode, we feature Timothy Snyder as part of a Literary Arts Special Event at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

This episode features M. Gessen, the final speaker of the 2024/25 Portland Arts & Lectures series at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

This episode features Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Omar El Akkad from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in October 2024.

In this episode, we feature Emily Wilson speaking as part of Portland Arts & Lectures at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in April 2025.

In this episode, we bring you a talk from Gabrielle Zevin. It was the culminating event of the 2024 Everybody Reads program.

This episode features Ijeoma Oluo, author of Be a Revolution, in conversation with author Hanif Fazal at the 2024 Portland Book Festival.

In this episode, we bring you a talk from Javier Zamora. It was the culminating event of the 2025 Everybody Read's program.

In this episode, we feature Timothy Egan speaking as part of Portland Arts & Lectures at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in January 2025.

Revisiting the 2024 Portland Book Festival with the "Deceit and Dark Humor" panel, featuring student readings from Writers in the Schools.

In this episode of The Archive Project, author Salman Rushdie reads from and discusses his 1999 novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

This week's episode features Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt when they interviewed each other for a special event hosted by Literary Arts in 2006.

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Connie Chung from her September 2024 event with Literary Arts.

This episode features acclaimed writer Renée Watson speaking at the World Stage Theater as part of the “I See My Light Shining” event in June 2024

This episode features Malcolm Gladwell in conversation about his newest book, Revenge of The Tipping Point. He spoke with Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor in front of a live audience in downtown Portland in October 2024.

National Book Foundation Presents: Awards & Activism at the 2024 Portland Book Festival with Robert Samuels and m.s. RedCherries.

This episode features M. Gessen, the final speaker of the 2024/25 Portland Arts & Lectures series at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Tune into this conversation about the infusion of cultural heritage and lineage into recipes which showcase first-generation American food.

In this episode, we feature Emily Wilson speaking as part of Portland Arts & Lectures at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in April 2025.

Celebrate Earth Day with fresh insights from authors and environmentalists Ferris Jabr and Amy Stewart at the 2024 Portland Book Festival.

Journey through Verselandia! 2024 with performances from the event and interviews with this year's hopefuls.

In this episode, we bring you a talk from Javier Zamora. It was the culminating event of the 2025 Everybody Read's program.

This episode features Ijeoma Oluo, author of Be a Revolution, in conversation with author Hanif Fazal at the 2024 Portland Book Festival.

Celebrated novelist and screenwriter, Alice Hoffman in conversation with the Director of the Multnomah County Library Vailey Oehlke at Wordstock: Portland's Book Festival.

Michael Ondaatje shares multiple sequences from his critically acclaimed fourth novel, Anil's Ghost.

A conversation from Portland Book Festival 2024 called Reconciliation with authors Renée Watson and Joe Wilkins, moderated by Mitchell S. Jackson.

This episode features a conversation with author Richard Powers from the 2024 Portland Book Festival.

This week, we're reaching way back into our archive to feature a talk from Pulitzer Prize winning writer Annie Dillard's special event in 1989.

Every year, the Multnomah County Library chooses one book they hope the whole city of Portland 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. Here at Literary Arts, our role is to bring the author to town for a talk in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.   This year, the 2025 Everybody Reads selection is the memoir Solito by Javier Zamora. For information about how to engage with the program, visit the Multnomah County Library's web site. I am thrilled to say Javier Zamora will be in Portland on Tuesday, March 11 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for the culminating event of the 2025 Everybody Reads Program.   For now, let's return to the 2024 Everybody Reads event, featuring Gabrielle Zevin and her novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.   Gabrielle Zevin has been steadily publishing fiction for almost two decades and has also written occasional criticism as well as award-winning screenplays. But it was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that catapulted her to the stratosphere of literary stardom. It was a #1 New York Times bestseller and spent over 50 weeks on the fiction bestseller list.    To be sure, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is about video games, and makes a convincing argument for the power and potential of narrative storytelling in video games. But really, it is about making art, and questions about originality, appropriation, and ambition that come with that pursuit. And perhaps more so, it is a love story, about friends and creative partners, and the excitement, joy, tragedy, and betrayal that come with any long relationship. It's about something, I'd wager, we've all been thinking about the past few years: connection.    Tickets for Everybody Reads 2025 with Javier Zamora are on sale now! Find your tickets here.  Gabrielle Zevin is a New York Times best-selling novelist whose books have been translated into forty languages.   Her tenth novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, was a New York Times Best Seller, a Sunday Times Best Seller, and a selection of the Tonight Show's Fallon Book Club. Tomorrow was Amazon.com's #1 Book of the Year, Time Magazine's #1 Book of the Year, a New York Times Notable Book, and the winner of both the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction and the Book of the Month Club's Book of the Year. Following a twenty-five-bidder auction, the feature film rights to Tomorrow were acquired by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios.  The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry also spent many months on the New York Times Best Seller List. A.J. Fikry was honored with the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award for Fiction, the Japan Booksellers' Prize, among other honors. A.J. Fikry is now a feature film with a screenplay by Zevin. She has also written children's books, including the award-winning Elsewhere.   She is the screenwriter of Conversations with Other Women (Helena Bonham Carter) for which she received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for Best First Screenplay. She has occasionally written criticism for the New York Times Book Review and NPR's All Things Considered, and she began her writing career, at age fourteen, as a music critic for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Zevin is a graduate of Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles. 

Celebrate Valentine's Day weekend with romance writers from the 2024 Portland Book Festival.

In this episode, we feature Tim Egan speaking as part of Portland Arts & Lectures at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in January 2025.

This episode features Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Omar El Akkad from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in October 2024.

Revisiting the 2024 Portland Book Festival with the "Deceit and Dark Humor" panel, featuring student readings from Writers in the Schools.

This week's episode features Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt when they interviewed each other for a special event hosted by Literary Arts in 2006.

Portland Arts & Lectures welcomes back Abraham Verghese to discuss his second novel, The Covenant of Water.

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Connie Chung from her September 2024 event with Literary Arts.

In this episode of The Archive Project, author Salman Rushdie reads from and discusses his 1999 novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

During her Stone Award acceptance interview, Dove discusses her writing process, adapting her work to the stage, and facing fear through poetry, among other subjects.

In this episode, we revisit a Portland Arts & Lectures event with author Yann Martel where he reads selections from his award-winning novel, Life of Pi, and answers audience questions about the book.