In this episode of The Archive Project, we are celebrating the kickoff of National Poetry Month with a special event, recorded in front of a live audience at Literary Arts event space in downtown Portland on September 17, 2022. This event was part of a partnership with the Alano Club of Portland and their Artists in Recovery series, about the intersections of mental health and substance use recovery, creativity, and building community. Learn more at PortlandAlano.org.
Alano Club director of development and community engagement Kasey Anderson emceed an evening with writers Leslie Jamison, Kaveh Akbar, and Hanif Abdurraqib, who shared recent and brand-new work with the audience, a multi-genre mix of prose and poetry. As they share their own work, talk about each other’s work and their relationship to Alano Club, it’s clear from the fact that they felt comfortable enough to share brand-new writing that these three writers deeply admire and respect each other.
Many of our episodes feature writers in conversation, but this week we have a trio of readings for you. First, we’ll hear from Kasey Anderson, of the Alano Club, and our first writer of the evening is Leslie Jamison, award-winning essayist and author of The Empathy Exams, reads from her memoir The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, as well a new work-in-progress.
Then Kaveh Akbar reads from his most recent book of poetry, Pilgrim Bell, and a novel-in-progress.
We also hear from poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America, his most recent poetry collection is A Fortune for Your Disaster. Abdurraqib reads from his poetry and a nonfiction project to close out the event.
A quick note: This conversation touches on mature themes of subsctance abuse and recovery that may not be suitable for all listeners.
Find your copy of Hanif, Kaveh, and Leslie’s books through
the LITERARY ARTS PAGE ON BOOKSHOP.ORG.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His most recent book, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much , was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us was named a book of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist, and longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune for Your Disaster, won the Lenore Marshall Prize. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
Kaveh Akbar is the author of Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, and has received honors such as a Levis Reading Prize and multiple Pushcart Prizes. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in low-residency programs at Warren Wilson and Randolph Colleges.
Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams. Her essays have appeared in the Believer, Harper’s, Oxford American, A Public Space, Tin House, and The Best American Essays. She is a regular columnist for the New York Times Book Review and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
