Clockwise from top left: Amy Wang, Julia Cooke, Lauren Groff, Andrew Proctor
no credit / OPB
In this episode of “Literary Arts: The Archive Project,” we feature two virtual Portland Book Festival 2021 events with very different subject matter, taking place nearly 1,000 years apart, but both featuring powerful protagonists and heroines changing their world. . In the first half of our show, we feature Julia Cooke, author of “Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am.” She is in conversation with Amy Wang of The Oregonian during an event broadcast live from Powell’s Books in Portland. The evening of events was themed ‘Hidden Worlds’, and in Cooke’s book, she takes us behind the scenes of one of the most important global companies of its time: Pan Am, the first modern international airline. Between 1966 and 1975, the airline and the women who manned their flights played a crucial role in international affairs — especially America’s role in Vietnam — far beyond what is commonly understood.
In the second half of our show, we feature Lauren Groff in an interview with Andrew Proctor of Literary Arts. Groff is the author of six fiction books. She rose to national recognition with her novel, “Fates and Furies,” published in 2015. Groff joined us from Florida for this virtual event, streaming from Annie Bloom Books in Portland. His new book, “The Matrix”, had just been published, so Groff and Proctor talked about writing a novel that was a significant departure from his previous work – part historical fiction and part magical realism – and what motivated her to create a story populated entirely by female characters with a plot that could perhaps best be described as a feminist revisionist story.
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by Julia Cooke journalism has appeared in Time, Smithsonian and Condé Nast Traveler. She is the author of “The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba” and the daughter of a former Pan Am executive. Her new book is “Come Fly the World: The Jet Age Story of the Women of Pan Am”.
Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels and two collections of short stories. Her 2021 novel, “The Matrix,” which Esquire described as “Incandescent…a radiant work of imagination and accomplishment,” was a National Book Award finalist and was selected by President Barack Obama as the one of his favorite books of the year. Her works have won the Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award and the Grand Prix de l’Héroïne de France. Groff is a three-time finalist for the National Book Award and twice for the Kirkus Prize, and has been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Prize, Southern Book Prize, and Los Angeles Times Prize. She received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute, and was named one of Granta’s top young American novelists. She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband and two sons.
andrew overseer has been Director of Literary Arts since 2009. Born and raised in Canada, Proctor earned a BA in English and Music from Concordia University in Montreal, then worked in London for the Cultural Attaché of the Canadian High Commission. In the UK, he also completed an MA in English Literature at the University of East Anglia under English Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. From 2000 to 2004, Proctor worked as an editor for HarperCollins in New York City, then as director of memberships and operations for the PEN American Center, a global literary and human rights organization focused on well-being. writers and editors. In total, Proctor has worked in the literary world for over twenty years in the government, for-profit and non-profit sectors.
Amy Wang covers the Oregon literary scene and writes a book bulletin for The Oregonian, where she is editor-in-chief. She was previously on the editorial staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Amy has a journalism degree from Columbia University.
