
The Archive Project
In partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Literary Arts is building a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world’s best writers over the first 30 years of Portland Arts & Lectures in Portland. In conjunction with our 30th anniversary, Literary Arts is rolling out an archive of the most sought-after talks from our lecture series. Each month, we’ll be publishing new lectures available for streaming on this website for free. With over 250 original lectures by the most creative and articulate minds of our generation, these discussions offer special moments between world-famous authors and our local literary community.
Show episodes
We have been proud to partner with the National Book Foundation to present conversations featuring National Book Award finalists as part of the annual Literary Arts Portland Book Festival. The 2024 event was on the theme of awards and activism. National Book Foundation executive director Ruth Dickey led a conversation
Every once in a while, a writer arrives in a historic moment who can explain it, even while it is still actually occurring. M. Gessen is one of these writers. They are a part of the lineage of other incredible writers of their moments, like George Orwell, and Hannah Arendt. Gessen is the author of eleven books and has
This week we have a conversation from the 2024 Portland Book Festival on first-generation American food: cooking that combines tradition and lineage with evolution and personal stories. The conversation features a cookbook author and home chef, restaurant co-owners, and a writer and food editor. We’ll hear from Krist
Emily Wilson was cast as Athena in a stage production of The Odyssey at the age of eight. It turned out to be a defining moment in her life, that ultimately set her on a course of decades of passionate and devoted study. Her 2018 translation of The Odyssey garnered overwhelming critical acclaim, became a bestseller,
This week we have a 2024 Portland Book Fest conversation about Planet Earth, and remarkable people who are working to understand it and protect its wonders. Our moderator is Zoë Carpenter, a writer and editor who has reported all over the United States and South America for Rolling Stone, The Nation, Guernica, and othe
Each year, Portland area youth spend months writing and competing in poetry slam competitions on high school campuses across the city. And each April, 20 finalists compete for the title of city-wide Portland slam champ at Verselandia! in front of an audience of nearly 1,000. We’re excited to share that the 2025 Verse