- On this episode of "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip" we're heading to Texas, a state known for doing everything big.

- [Lauren] And it goes beyond cowboy mythology.

Generations of writers have explored the complexities of life here, from literary giants like "Lonesome Dove" and "The House on Mango Street," to contemporary works including "The Gates of the Alamo," "Juneteenth Rodeo" and "Warrior Girl."

- Join "PBS Books", the Library of Congress, and the Texas Center for the Book on a literary adventure through the Lone Star State.

This is "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip."

(bright music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you in part by Libro.fm.

Libro.fm partners with more than 4,000 bookstores around the world to sell audiobooks, encouraging more people to read while supporting local independent bookstores.

- Hello and welcome.

I'm Fred Nahhat here with Lauren Smith from "PBS Books."

- Come along as we explore our nation's storied past and spotlight the landscapes, communities, and voices that continue to shape America's literary story today.

- Each stop on our reading road trip offers a new window into America's story.

Visit the "PBS Books" YouTube channel to explore the full series and subscribe so you won't miss a single destination as we continue our journey across the nation.

- Today we're exploring Texas, a place where history, culture, and storytelling are woven into everyday life.

With sprawling deserts and rolling plains, to bustling cities and Gulf Coast shores, Texas is a place of remarkable diversity and remarkable stories.

- People say everything is bigger in Texas, and in a way that's true.

We are the second largest state by both total area and population.

In area, we're second only to Alaska, and with more than 30 million residents, second only to California.

- It has a lot of diversity, both in terms of its landscape and its people.

One thing that I find pretty compelling is I think since about 2011 Texas has been classified as a majority minority state, with people of color making up the majority of the population.

More than 40% of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, 14% is Black or African American, and Asians comprise about 6%.

- Well, I would describe the landscape of Texas in the way I would describe the landscape of the world itself.

It's a giant state with every possible kind of landscape.

You know, we have deserts, mountains, sea coasts, dense forests, prairies, plains.

- Texas is such a huge mix of stories and experiences and settings in a very broad range.

It's very young and very old at the same time.

It's very urban and very rural, mixed together.

It's sometimes very isolated and some very international.

- Everything here, it just seems to arrive larger than life.

The sky, the weather, the highways, and the stories that go along with all of that.

- Texas is a real hybrid of old and new.

It's a state that really values its history and its culture, the folklore.

We talk a lot about the cowboy myth, but it's also a state of a lot of industry.

- But especially because of NASA, we are also a place connected to the future.

As most people know, Mission Control for NASA is at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

And all around the state, people were celebrating their recent Artemis mission and are looking forward to further space exploration.

(bright music) - Texas has inspired some of America's most enduring literature.

Its writers have chronicled life along the border, on the open range, in growing cities, and everywhere in between, capturing stories that are deeply American and uniquely Texan.

- Larry McMurtry is synonymous with Texas in many ways.

He wrote more than 30 novels and 50 screenplays and he is of course best known for "Lonesome Dove."

- I mean, who doesn't love Larry McMurtry?

"Lonesome Dove" was formative to me.

I love that book.

- It was truly a work that brought the mystique of the cowboys forefront, but also the humanity.

And it was a true bridge between old, past history and where we are today.

- And at The Wittliff Collection in San Marcos, they have the production archives of "Lonesome Dove," the costumes, the props, scripts, a lot of things.

And people come from many different places and many countries to see it.

- "Lonesome Dove", of course, is a great book.

I think my favorite McMurtry book is "Duane's Depressed," which was I think the third or fourth in "The Last Picture Show" series, but it was really a very acute observation of what life in West Texas, contemporary West Texas is like.

- He wrote other works that are very common to the modern nomenclature, "Terms of Endearment" and "The Last Picture Show."

He also did screenplays for several of his works.

- He deserves a very special place in the recognition of Texas writers for helping break down stereotypes even in the middle of telling a story in the classic Old West.

- Cormac McCarthy to me is obviously known as one of the great American novelists.

He's really quintessentially a Texas author.

Some of his most celebrated works take place here in Texas.

"A Blood Meridian," "No Country for Old Men," "All the Pretty Horses."

Many people are familiar with not just the books, but also the film versions.

- His archives are housed at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, which is in San Marcos, which is about half an hour from Austin.

- Cormac really dealt in myths, you know, in an ominous, biblical, oppressive sense.

- Very imaginative and yet he can truly capture the heart and the pain and the joy in situations on a piece of paper, and I think that's something that writers all hope for.

- His themes are very classically West to me because it's very good versus evil and then sort of the blending of, where do you draw the line?

And we really all are facing the same common moral challenges internally.

- And so I think Cormac McCarthy really casts a spell that way.

So it's not just his prose, which is remarkable, but it's the identity that he projects, you know, and that's true of a lot of Texas writers.

- Americo Paredes was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, on the border of Mexico.

He was the first Mexican American to receive a doctorate from the University of Texas.

And he really devoted his scholarly life to exploring life in the borderlands.

- But then he was struck by the fact that so much of what his culture, my culture, came from was not recorded, was not included, was not documented academically.

And so he began to write not just scholarly papers, he began to write popular books about the culture and the legends and the folklore of Texas previous to the arrival of English speakers.

Because the early Mexican Texans did not have access to paper, pencil, publishers, press in general, they would record their history in ballads called corridos, and he began to document the corridos.

- He's best known for his work "With a Pistol in His Hand" and "The Border Ballad and Its Heroes," and another work, "George Washington Gomez: A Mexicotexan Tale."

And I think that that prevalence of opening this level of scholarship and really saying music is scholarship, history and folklore is part of how we learn identity, was really instrumental in shaping studies for many, many decades.

- J. Frank Dobie is widely regarded as the father of Texas literature.

He recognized the value of our state's proud oral storytelling tradition.

He adapted the tales he heard into bestselling books and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

One of the books he is best known for is "Coronado's Children," which is a collection of folk stories about lost minds and lost treasures.

- Well, few figures are as monumental to Texas literature and cultural heritage as J. Frank Dobie.

He spent his life collecting and preserving oral stories from ranchers and vaqueros and people who lived in rural areas.

He recognized the risk of losing this wonderful heritage and just embarked on this mission to capture and publish these works.

- In addition to his many books that captured the world of rural Texas in the days when it was the open range here in Texas, he was a journalist and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

- And so when he died in 1964, he left the majority of his estate to create the J. Frank Dobie Library Trust.

- He actually left a trust to support small public libraries because a lot of his work took him to these very small communities and knew that most of these stories, if they were going to be present somewhere, they were gonna be present in those very small community libraries.

So his trust, which existed for many years, really supported these really small town libraries and it made a huge difference.

- [Michele] Sandra Cisneros is a Mexican-American author.

She's best known for her first novel, "The House on Mango Street," which is loosely based on her own childhood.

- She was born to a Mexican immigrant and they lived in Chicago for many years, and this book is based on that experience.

She was one of seven children, and so she often wrestles in her work with identity.

- At the time she came along, she changed American literature by centering a young Latina girl, making her the narrative voice.

- And those themes, also very timeless, but in some ways very unexplored before with regard to Mexican-American women.

And another of her works is "A Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories," and that won the National Medal of Arts in 2015 and is one of her most celebrated works.

- She's also a competent poet.

She's done collections of short stories.

She even has a picture book called "Have You Seen Marie?"

That's a very poetic prose, but it's a beautiful exploration of grief and loss and yet it's something that at any age we understand.

- She founded the socially-engaged Macondo Writers Workshop in her living room, which still goes on to this day.

And her papers are housed at The Wittliff Collections in San Marcos so people can visit and learn more about her there.

- Katherine Anne Porter was an American journalist, essayist, short story writer and novelist.

She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1966 for "The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter."

She was also known for her bestseller, "The Ship of Fools."

- Katherine Anne Porter's a really interesting figure.

I was recently, it was recommended to me that I go back and read her memoirs, biography, because she had a very interesting life.

She emerged from rural poverty in Texas and then kind of reinvented herself.

She grew up in a two-room log cabin on the Texas frontier and then went on to become one of the state's most acclaimed writers.

- Her short stories in particular are brilliant, utterly brilliant.

And she wrote very powerfully.

- And one of her most known collections is "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," which was published in 1939.

- More in an Eastern literary tradition than a Texas literary tradition, and much more concerned about an interior landscape rather than the vast, rolling expanses of Texas.

- And so another great writer who expressed so much of the inner life of people, particularly women, that had not really been explored before within the setting of Texas, within the setting of the Southwest.

(bright music) - Texas writers today continue to expand the state's literary legacy, bringing fresh perspectives to questions of identity, culture, history, and belonging.

One of them is Sarah Bird, who writes with humor, heart, and a sharp eye for modern life.

- Sarah Bird is the author of 11 novels as well as other books, screenplays, and magazine articles.

She's a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the Texas Institute of Letters.

One of my favorite books of hers is called "Last Dance on the Starlight Pier."

It is set in Galveston in the 1930s, and Galveston at that time was run by the mob.

She also did a wonderful book about Black rodeos where she took all these photographs, and it's like an amazing book to look at to sort of diversify, you know, what people think of when they think of a cowboy.

- I would say that Texas gave me two things that were essential to my life as a writer.

First, material.

Endless, endless material.

And the second was permission.

And like, this is a place where, you know, buddy, if you can dream it, go do it.

I mean, it kind of started almost the instant I set foot in Texas in that I was just so captivated and very, very fortunately I was studying photojournalism.

So if you had a camera around your neck, you were legitimate.

It was a passport to go anywhere you wanted.

And I did not grow up with, obviously, grow up with rodeos, and they fascinated me.

I photographed prison rodeos, kids' rodeos, charreadas, Mexican rodeos, Native American rodeos, girls rodeos, gay rodeos.

But I just was fascinated by how all these different groups remade this most American of past times in their own image.

I mean, the instant I set foot in a Black rodeo, I knew this was my favorite of all the rodeos.

I was just so thrilled, I thought, "Wow, I can't wait to share this with the world."

And back in those days, photography was not only laborious, it was expensive.

And I was just out of graduate school, and so, you know, that project kind of broke my heart and broke my bank account.

So I shoved it all under my bed and, you know, might have stayed there had it not been for the pandemic.

You know, and at that time, there was a huge movement to reclaim Black heritage in the West.

I was just thrilled, you know, I'd stayed alive long enough for the world to change and become interested, and then UT Press published it.

Published it, and that was huge.

I mean, that's been a huge thrill and satisfaction for me to do that and to actually go back and put this book in the hands of some of the cowboys and cowgirls I had photographed so long ago.

And it meant a lot.

- Poet, author, educator, and cultural advocate Carmen Tafolla has spent decades celebrating the richness of Mexican American life in Texas.

Through poetry, children's literature, and storytelling, her work gives voice to communities and experiences that help define the state's cultural landscape.

- Carmen Tafolla is a poet, storyteller, performance artist, motivational speaker, professor, and a native of San Antonio's Westside barrio.

Her children's books include "Warrior Girl" and "The Last Butterfly."

She was San Antonio's very first poet laureate and she wrote the collection "This River Here: Poems of San Antonio."

And the only thing better than reading a Carmen Tafolla poem is hearing her perform it for you, so she's really just a blessing.

- I do come from a long line of storytellers.

On both sides of the family, on all sides of the family, people were always telling the stories of what happened.

They were preserving that history.

And part of the reason they did that was because our history wasn't written.

And when I went to school, here in Texas, it was against state law to even speak Spanish, even if you were speaking your own name.

We were not in the history books, we were not in the textbooks.

I think all of that left me with a very, me and my whole generation, with a distinct hunger for hearing our own history and our own stories.

And so, I began to write very early on.

I think there was a resistance against being invisible, and especially to eliminate some of the prejudice and some of the stereotypes that were out there.

So I wanted to write about the beauty of my community, I wanted people to know that my barrio had these wonderful people and they were brave and strong and they weren't all criminals and they weren't all liars and they didn't all speak like the stereotypes on TV.

They were people to be admired.

So there was a lot of experimentation, and so I loved that.

And to this day, people ask me, "What genre do you write in?"

And I thought, "Oh, well... I think of my work not in one genre, but kind of like a Mexican sarape.

There's lots of different colors and they're very different from each other, but somehow they all work together."

And so that's what I've done, I've been a poet most of my life.

Short stories.

I began to write children's books in my 30s.

Historical nonfiction.

I've done a novel in verse.

I've done a lot of plays that I perform on stage as performance art.

So I just, I move a lot between genres and I enjoy that freedom from borders, that freedom to cross over and try something new and experimental.

- Another author of note is Stephen Harrigan, who has helped chronicle the Texas experience through acclaimed novels, essays, and historical narratives that capture both the grandeur and complexity of the Lone Star State.

- Stephen Harrigan is the author of the New York Times' bestselling novel "The Gates of the Alamo," the sweeping Texas history "Big Wonderful Thing," which covers 15,000 years of Texas history, and decades of excellent journalism.

He's a longtime writer for Texas Monthly Magazine, a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and he is a very staunch advocate for libraries and has really been very public about his support for libraries and librarians in Texas.

- "The Gates of the Alamo" was a book I sort of started fantasizing about when I was about 14, about writing a novel about the Alamo.

And I was surprised when I started thinking about it seriously many years later that there were various novels that included the Alamo, but there wasn't one that I knew of that really was about it and in a panoramic way.

And I thought there was an opening here for a different kind of story, you know, one that highlighted characters you weren't expecting to find, that had a wide enough perspective to include not just the defenders of the Alamo but the Mexican Army, the people who were caught in between on both sides.

So I spent about eight years on that one.

I had a very high bar for myself in terms of historical authenticity and reliability, so that's why it took so long, because I was researching it so carefully.

It was a kind of fulfillment of a lifelong ambition for me to write that book.

And then "An Anchor in the Sea of Time" is a collection of essays, almost all of them from Texas Monthly, and they're all about in one way or another history or identity or time, you know, memory.

And so they all felt like they belonged together to me in a book, and so I did that.

I don't think in terms of what people will take away from my books.

This is all about happenstance.

It's all about, you know, whether you're touching a nerve, whether you're hitting a preoccupation that the rest of the country is sharing at that moment.

And, you know, sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don't.

But it doesn't, to me, make it any less urgent what I'm trying to communicate.

You're not in control of the reactions that people have of your work, and that's intimidating and liberating at the same time.

(gentle music) - Well, they say everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes its library culture.

Across the state, libraries serve as centers for learning, creativity, and community connection.

- The library scene in Texas is massive.

There are 540 public library systems in Texas spread throughout our 254 counties.

Those are systems, it's a higher number if you include the individual branches.

And the total book holdings of all of these library systems is more than 32 million books.

Let's start with the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library.

It's the flagship location of the Dallas Public Library.

So the seventh floor of this library holds two rare treasures, both free to view by the public.

The first is an original copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on July 4th, 1776, and it's the only copy west of the Mississippi.

Nearby to the Declaration of Independence is an even older treasure, an original copy of Shakespeare's "First Folio" published in 1623.

That is very popular with visitors.

- You know I'm from San Antonio and I'm biased.

I'm gonna start with the San Antonio Library.

Its nickname to those of us who love it is The Red Enchilada.

It's beautiful Mexican modernist architecture on the outside with very bright colors, including enchilada red, which is why we call it The Red Enchilada.

It's got a beautiful Fernando Botero sculpture in it and some significant collections like the Latino Collection, and beautiful programming, including the annual La Catrina Ball.

That's one of my favorites.

- The Harry Ransom Center is pretty darn fabulous.

That's also on the UT campus and it is a treasure trove.

- [Michele] Their collections include one million books, 42 million manuscripts, five million photographs.

Some of the cool things they have include Robert De Niro's archive of scripts notes, costumes and props, Jack Kerouac's notebook documenting his writing of "On the Road."

- I mean, for writers, it's humbling, because they have so many.

You see drafts, revisions, false starts, and, you know, the actual labor behind all these well-known masterpieces.

- So the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum at Baylor University in Waco, it's possibly my favorite library in Texas.

You step in there and it feels like you're stepping into the 19th century.

The marble columns, cathedral windows, parquet floors, hand-carved bookcases are just a perfect setting for the letters, poetry, and personal memorabilia of the famed Victorian poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

- And at almost any point during the day you see the speckled sunlight as it has gone through the stained-glass windows all across the building.

I believe it is one of the largest collections of secular stained-glass windows in the world, and it's just a beautiful building.

- I'm always at the Austin Central Library, and that's like literally because they made a hologram, so I'm the greeter.

It's one of my absolute favorite public spaces in Texas.

- [Michele] Time Magazine just named the Austin Public Library downtown building as one of 25 buildings that represent America.

- [Sarah] It has everything from an art gallery to this massive grand staircase.

It goes up to a roof deck, has great downtown lake views.

I mean, even if you hate books, it's worth going in there.

But if you love books, you'll love this library.

- Well, first and foremost, I would invite anyone to come to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

You walk through our wonderful granite doors and you will see a huge mural depicting the history of the state.

We have exhibits available for viewing, and of course it's a great place for research.

But there is something about the immediacy of being in the library, and a very beautiful one.

I think that's important too, because it reminds us that libraries are these special, magical places that truly in my mind are a pillar of modern society.

(bright music) - With a state as large and populated as Texas, there is bound to be a thriving independent bookstore scene.

From legendary bookstores in Austin and Houston to beloved neighborhood shops across the state, these spaces help readers discover new stories while bringing communities together.

- Texas has many thriving independent bookstores, but whether they're a small town or a big city, a majority of the bookstores obviously host events, they offer food and drink and really serve as community anchors.

- So, BookPeople is the pioneer.

It's one of the great independent bookstores in the entire country, and it was the cornerstone of the Austin literary scene.

It was the foundation, and I've had so many fun events there.

- [Michele] It's three stories.

It's been voted the best bookstore in Austin for more than 20 years.

The children's book section on the third floor is really just a wonderful space.

- But they also do great programs, which I really appreciate.

They bring in authors, but also offer the community a chance for engagement.

And I appreciate that they take that so seriously and do so much with that.

- The other bookstore I now love, it's a relative newcomer, is First Light Books.

It's located in a converted post office in the historic Hyde Park neighborhood.

There's always something fun going on at First Light Books.

- It's got this great sort of sense of synergy.

It's next to a pizza place and next to a little restaurant.

They have a little coffee shop, like all bookstores do, and people are always sitting out on the patio reading or talking.

And it feels like a hub for that neighborhood.

- Dallas has a plethora of wonderful bookstores.

I in particular love Interabang Books and then I always visit the Deep Vellum bookstore.

Full disclosure, Deep Vellum is my publisher, so I feel a special connection there.

Houston also has wonderful bookstores.

The ones that I've spent the most time in are Brazos Bookstore and Blue Willow Books.

- [Michele] Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, it is a very active anchor for the literary community in Houston.

It has seven in-store book clubs, lots of author events.

- There's a lot of good reasons that's a beloved bookstore in Houston, and the number one has to be its owner, Valerie Kohler.

She just imbues the place with this feeling of... That it's personally curated, it's her store, and she knows her customers and greets them like family.

So you know, high marks to Blue Willow.

- Got to mention Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio, on Broadway.

An amazing place.

They have a great collection, they have wonderful readings.

They make everybody feel comfortable, they've even got a wide array of coffees and snacks and you can just go there and spend a weekend, a week, whatever you want, but I really enjoy that.

And I think my absolute favorite place of all is still Half Price Books.

- [Michele] It was founded in Dallas in 1972.

They are known as America's largest family-owned retailer for new and used books.

They have more than 100 stores.

And every time I go in there, no matter the time of day, it's always packed.

- [Carmen] You can go there and find everything from antique books, the latest newly published books, collectors' items, just everything that you could possibly ask, and all at half price.

- And I think that's incredibly important, to be able to give people a place to buy affordable reads, and I value that a great deal.

(bright music) - If you're planning your own reading road trip, Texas offers no shortage of literary destinations.

Historic homes, world-class archives, book festivals, and museums invite visitors to explore the people and the stories that helped shape the state.

- The Texas Book Festival recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

It was founded in 1995 by then First Lady of Texas, Laura Bush, and volunteer Mary Margaret Farabee.

And now it's one of the biggest book festivals in the country.

They have more than 250 authors every year and more than 40,000 people come.

They have author sessions throughout the Capitol building in here at the library.

- If that wasn't enough space for us, there were tents set up all on the grounds for everything from children's activities to demonstrations for cookbook writers.

Every book possible that people could be interested in is being presented on at the Texas Book Festival, and we have writers there from throughout the world that come in to present their books.

And we have a lot of Texas writers that are represented there, but especially we have thousands of Texas readers.

- I would recommend, you know, if you want to have a lovely book reading experience, you could take some sandwiches to the Zilker Park Botanical Garden.

It's this beautiful Japanese garden and there's a little tea house that you can sit in and nibble your sandwiches and read a book and look out on Austin.

Great, great view of Austin.

And the first thing that you see in your literary view of Austin as you're looking out on the playing fields of Zilker Park is something called Shakespeare's Rock.

And every year during the summer, Shakespeare's plays are performed at Shakespeare's Rock.

So that's your total literary experience right there, am I right?

(laughs) - For me, the Alamo.

I'm not the only one who's written about that, obviously.

There's so many people who have written about that event and the events surrounding it.

And you know, it's kind of a place to center yourself and think about Texas history and what happened in Texas, how we got to be who we are.

And also it gives you a sense, a very strong sense, in San Antonio in particular to go to the missions and get a sense of that Spanish colonial history, which is so important to the state.

- Texas is the only state with three presidential libraries, which all showcase American history.

The Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W.

Bush, and George W. Bush Presidential Libraries each preserve the historical documents and artifacts that highlight the lives, political careers, and public services of these three presidents.

- In Austin, we have the LBJ Presidential Library.

There are exhibitions there, of course, collections that you can browse, but they also host a lot of wonderful events by writers of all kinds.

And then I recently for the first time visited George W. Bush's library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

We were there actually to celebrate Laura Bush, who was the founder of our book festival.

She founded both the Texas Book Festival and the National Book Festival, and so we got together with the National Book Festival to award her a lifetime achievement award.

And we spent some time before the event itself going around the archives and I think I just sort of scratched the surface, there's a lot more to explore there.

(gentle music) - Today's trip through the bookish culture of Texas is part of a nationwide celebration.

2026 marks the United States 250th birthday, so "PBS Books" has partnered with the Library of Congress to celebrate the stories, authors, and books that define each corner of this nation.

- You might know that the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world.

But what you might not know is they've established Affiliated Centers for the Book across the US, with the mission to make the Library of Congress and its resources even more accessible to all Americans.

- I'm Lee Ann Potter, the Director of Professional Learning & Outreach Initiatives at the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress is the Congressional Library and the National Library of the United States, and the largest library in the world with more than 181 million items, from photographs to maps, from motion pictures to sound recordings, from newspapers to manuscripts, and more.

Oh, and yes, there are books, millions of them.

In this series, "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip," you will hear about many books and authors, and poems, and short stories, and more, and how together they make up our nation's literary heritage.

As you do, I hope you will keep in mind that while they are all unique and come from different parts of our vast country, they all have something very important in common.

They all live in the collections of the Library of Congress.

You will also hear about the library's Affiliated Centers for the Book.

There is one in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

These centers promote reading, libraries, and literacy, and they celebrate and share their state or territory's literary heritage through a variety of programs that you will hear about in this very special series.

- Today we're joined by the Texas Center for the Book, which is supported by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in Austin.

- The mission of the Texas Center for the Book is to celebrate the written word and literary heritage of Texas.

Our programs highlight the importance of books, reading, literacy, and libraries.

We are a proud partner of the Texas Book Festival.

The Texas Center for the Book here at the Texas State Library, we host several of the festival panels every year and we love doing that.

Lone Star Libraries, I love working on this.

It's a quarterly series of articles and videos that highlight and celebrate exceptional libraries around Texas.

And some of the libraries I mentioned earlier are ones that we've showcased with a video and article.

And it's just really a pleasure to be able to share some of these spaces and the work they're doing there to a wider audience.

Letters About Literature is a fun program we do every year.

Students read a book, poem, short story, or other written work and write a letter to an author, living or dead, explaining how the work changed their view of themselves or the world.

The contest is open to kids in 4th grade through 12th grade and the letters are always just very moving.

The top winners and their school libraries receive a cash prize and we have an award ceremony at the Texas Library Association Conference every spring, where the students attend and receive their certificate.

And usually I share the winning letters with the authors if they're still alive, and sometimes they write them back and it's really fun.

- If you'd like to learn more about the Texas Center for the Book and its programs, you can visit them online at tsl.texas.gov/centerforthebook.

- Well, Texas has lived up to its big and bold reputation, especially when it comes to its literary heritage.

Thank you again to the Library of Congress and the Texas Center for the Book for partnering with "PBS Books" as we travel the country exploring the books, authors, and destinations that define America's story.

- Have you had a chance to visit any of these places, read any of these incredible works, or want to suggest other great reads?

Tell us your story in the chat or comments.

- And if our visit to Texas has inspired you to explore the literary heritage of your own state, the Library of Congress is a great place to begin.

Visit in person in Washington D.C., search its vast digital collections online, or connect with your local Center for the Book.

- For more information on the authors, institutions, and places featured in this episode, visit us at pbsbooks.org/readingroadtrip.

- And this is just one stop along the way.

On the "PBS Books" YouTube channel, you'll find the full journey, stories from across the country, all in one place, ready to depart whenever you are.

- Until next time.

- [Both] Happy reading!

(bright music) (bright music continues) (music ends) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you in part by Libro.fm.

Libro.fm partners with more than 4,000 bookstores around the world to sell audiobooks, encouraging more people to read while supporting local independent bookstores.

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