The Archive Project

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Michael Lewis from the 2023 Portland Book Festival.

Lewis is one of the most accomplished and celebrated writers of nonfiction at work today. He is the author of 17 books of nonfiction including Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, the Big Short and Flashboys. All his books are about unconventional people doing extraordinary things, usually behind the scenes.

We’re excited to say that we will welcome Lewis back to Portland on October 29 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to talk about his new book, Blockers, about the courageous civil servants, everyday Americans, who have stood up to the worst impulses of the Trump administration.

You can get your ticket here.

For now, we’re going back to 2023, when Lewis joined us to talk about his book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon.  It’s a book about Sam Bankman Fried and the eventual collapse of this crypto currency hedge fund, Alameda Research, and the exchange he also founded, called FTX.  When we sat down to talk, Bankman Fried had just been found guilty of seven Federal charges, all finance related, and was awaiting sentencing.  It was a trial that many consider the biggest and most important in the world of finance in decades, and was one that was watched closely all across the world.  Lewis had unrestricted access to Bankman Fried, spending over year reporting as Bankman Fried amassed one of the largest fortunes in the world and then lost everything as his businesses collapsed.  The result of that reporting in Going Infinite paints a picture of a Bankman Fired that is very different than how he was portrayed in the press and by government prosecutors. Lewis offers a perspective on Bankman Fried and many of his closest colleagues that is rooted in understanding their deeper motives, how they were shaped as a generation, and how and why they made the mistakes they made.  His conclusion is both startling and important to reckon with for its consequences for our society, regardless of whether you followed the case closely or not.

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, The Fifth Risk, and Giong Infinite. His most recent book is Blockers. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

 

For over fifteen years, Andrew Proctor has led Literary Arts, growing it into the largest literary center in the United States, opening a new headquarters in Portland in 2024 after a $23 million dollar capital campaign. Previously, he worked in New York in the publishing industry and in the human rights sector, and also in London for the cultural affairs office of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.  He has served in a variety of national and local boards and councils and currently sits on the board of the Central East Side Industrial Council and is a member of Mayor Wilson’s Central City Roundtable in Portland.

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.  We’re broadcasting this talk now to celebrate her incredible contribution to American literature, as she passed away in September 2026 at the age of 81.

When Annie Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, she was the youngest woman ever to do so. She won for a book published the previous year called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which is a nonfiction book that meditates on writing, solitude, the natural world, and spirituality. The book had a profound impact at the time of its publication and garnered comparisons to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.

Dillard has gone on to have genre bending career, publishing over a dozen titles including book-length nonfiction, novels, essays, and criticism, in addition to more than 25-years of teaching at universities in the Pacific Northwest and the east coast. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal for her life’s work.

In this talk, her characteristic sense of irony and humor elicits huge laughs from the audience and her generous spirit invites quiet attention when she tells a story. She reads two excerpts — first from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and then from a book of essays called Teaching a Stone to Talk. Whether she is describing muskrats in Virginia or witnessing an eclipse in the Yakima Valley, she draws profound insights into the nature of existence and what the natural world has to tell us about ourselves.

Annie Dillard, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1945, was a poet and author best known for her prose in both fiction and nonfiction. Dillard has been considered a major voice in American literature since she published Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in 1974 and won a Pulitzer Prize. Influenced by Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, Dillard writes compressed, lyric poetry and prose that engages the balance of daily life within the frame of literature and ideas.

Dillard’s numerous books include the poetry collections Tickets for a Prayer Wheel and Mornings Like This: Found Poems; the nonfiction books Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, For the Time Being, and The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New; and the novels The Living and The Maytrees.

A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Dillard also holds honorary doctorates at Boston College, the University of Hartford, and Connecticut College. Additional honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, a New York Press Club Award for Excellence, an Appalachian Gold Medallion, a Campion Award, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal in 2014, awarded to her by President Barack Obama.

Annie Dillard passed away September 15, 2026 at the age of 81.

The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021. Portland Monuments Project aims to foster public dialogue to reimagine and transform the purpose of monuments and memorials in Portland.

This episode is part three, the final installment of a three-part series as part of the Portland Monuments Project. This week we explore the city’s potential futures; episode one looked to the past, and episode two explored the present.

Literary Arts is involved in this project because storytelling is at the heart of our mission, and monuments tell a story about who we were, who we are, what we value, and who we aspire to be. They tell stories about different communities and the stories they tell are dynamic, in so much as our community is changing, time is passing, and the context for these fixed objects and changes around them.

In this episode, we’ll think about the monuments we need. We’ll hear from Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor, whose voice you might recognize as the other co-host of this show. We have a conversation with Portland writers Mitchell S. Jackson and Renée Watson about who they think should be honored with a monument in Portland. And we’ll hear from the people of Portland about the monuments they want to see and the stories they want to be told about this city, where we’ve been, and where it’s going.

Our guide for today’s episode is Archive Project editor and producer, Matthew Workman.

The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021 by fostering public dialogue  to reimagine and transform the purpose of monuments and memorials in Portland.

This episode is part two of a three-part series as part of the Portland Monument Project. The first episode revisited the city’s past, part two will look at the present, and the culminating episode explores what may come to fruition in the future.

Literary Arts is involved in this project because storytelling is at the heart of our mission, and monuments tell a story about who we were, who we are, what we value, and who we aspire to be.  They tell stories about different communities and the stories they tell are dynamic, in so much as our community is changing, time is passing and the context for these fixed objects changes around them.

In this episode, we’re tracing the path of a monument that went from a guerilla artwork, to a museum piece, and will soon be a monument again. Join us as we travel from the top of Mount Tabor to the mouth of the Columbia River to learn more about this particular monument and its subject – York the Explorer – from art curators, historians, and some nice people enjoying an afternoon in the park. 

Our guide for today’s episode is Archive Project editor and producer, Matthew Workman.

The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021 by fostering public dialogue  to reimagine and transform the purpose of monuments and memorials in Portland.

This episode is part one of a three-part series as part of the Portland Monument Project. This episode explores the city’s past, and part two will look at the present and the future.

Literary Arts is involved in this project because storytelling is at the heart of our mission, and monuments tell a story about who we were, who we are, what we value, and who we aspire to be.  They tell stories about different communities and the stories they tell are dynamic, in so much as our community is changing, time is passing and the context for these fixed objects changes around them.

In this episode we’ll talk to the staff at the City’s Office of Arts and Culture who are leading this initiative, hear from experts, from historians, from passersby, and from other stakeholders who are questioning our past practices, and hope create change in how we, as a community choose our monuments – who gets to decide which ones are put up and where they go.

Our guide for today’s episode is Archive Project editor and and producer, Matthew Workman.

For a hands-on experience, join local nonfiction comic artist Shay Mirk for a free creative zine-making workshop on the monuments we need on May 9th and May 10th. Click here to learn more and register.