- On this episode of "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip" we're heading to the natural state.

- Come along as we explore Arkansas.

This state has inspired powerful voices from poets like Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings" and arguably one of the best Western novels of all time: "True Grit" by Charles Portis.

- Plus, we'll hear from today's authors who echo Arkansas in their work.

From Katy Duffield's picture book, "Start Your Engines" to Daniel Black's heartbreaking, "Isaac's Song" and even Ayana Gray's mythological retelling "I, Medusa."

- Join PBS Books, the Library of Congress and the Arkansas Center for the Book on a literary adventure through Arkansas.

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

(joyful music) - Well, hello and welcome, I'm Fred Nehhat here with Lauren Smith from PBS Books.

- Come along as we guide you through America's literary landscape, both past and present.

Be sure to like, share and subscribe right now so you never miss an episode of "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip" here on PBS Books.

- Well, today we're heading to Arkansas, once called The Land of Opportunity in the Wonder State.

Its diverse landscape has long captivated travelers and writers who find inspiration in the outdoors.

And yes, there are plenty of hidden gems here, literally.

- I think truly it's the geographic beauty of the natural state.

Arkansas is the natural state and that contributes to its literary uniqueness and how it inspires writers and readers.

Well, if you're taking a road trip across Arkansas, you'd see that it's one of those places where the view will keep shifting outside your car's window.

You'd go from like the hilly Ozark and Ouachita Mountain ranges, and then over the flat fields of the delta.

Along the way, you'd pass probably some of the most gorgeous lakes and rivers you've ever seen.

- [Karen] There's 53 state parks here, so that you don't really have to go very far to find a site nearby to, you know, engage in history and the natural beauty of the state.

- But there's so much history here.

When we think about the Trail of Tears, when we think about the Civil War, when we think about Hot Springs and the original gangsters that used to come to Arkansas as a paradise, there's just so much history that people don't know.

Arkansas' story really compelling.

And I think one of the more unique stories.

- I think Arkansas is full of storytellers.

Rural people tend to be people who find great, great joy and great festivity in the art of storytelling.

We are folks who regardless of race, regardless of gender, regardless of all of those divisions, we're people who love to tell stories.

- Stories about how we got started, stories about the people that have come here and left.

The Great migration, Arkansas has a great history as far as The Great Migration.

So the storytelling in Arkansas I think is just an amazing part of us.

- But there's not only is the geography different, but the culture is extremely different.

I mean, it's kind of an old south mixed with this kind of mountain culture.

And I love how there are so many different cultures and regions that bring their own culture even within this one place.

(upbeat music) - From porch steps to river bends, Arkansas carries a chorus of voices, poems that rise like the mountains, and frontier grit that cuts clean.

These are the stories that echo and inspire to this day.

- [Karen] Maya Angelou was born in 1928 in St.

Louis, Missouri, and she's internationally renowned and bestselling author, a memoirist, an essayist, a poet, a civil rights activist.

"I know Why The Cage Bird Sings," was first published in 1970 and it's an autobiographical account of her childhood, including the 10 years she spent in stamps Arkansas in Lafayette County with her grandmother - When she left St.

Louis, her native home, and came to Arkansas, she did not speak for five years, and it was a teacher in Stamps, Arkansas who really started her to speak again, sharing with her her love for poetry and books and writing.

- I read this book by Maya Angelou called "I Know Why The Cages Birth Sings."

And what was so impactful to me was the notion of a child taking refuge in silence.

That a little black girl could construct that kind of agency, right?

Could make for herself a kind of healing balm within her own soul.

And I said, "One day, I wonder if I could write like this, if I could be a writer like she is."

- Maya Angelou was one of those writers who makes you wriggle in your seat when you're reading her work because you feel incredibly seen.

And it's so powerful that she was able to write words years ago that still to this day resonate.

- Her book of poetry, "Just give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die," Was nominated for a Pulitzer in 1972 and she was Bill Clinton's first inaugural poet, reading her poem "On the Pulse of Morning."

And again, her body of work is so rich and varied.

- I saw her speak publicly many, many, many times and I don't know that I ever saw her speak without weeping.

- [Karen] On the topic of inaugural poets, Miller Williams, born in 1930 in Lawrence County, Arkansas was maybe potentially became more widely known as President Clinton's second inaugural poet with his poem of history and hope.

- [Ayana] Really clever, sharp, beautiful syntax, the way he puts words together, makes you pause and let the words sink in.

- [Karen] And one of the founders of the University of Arkansas Press and with his long association with the University of Arkansas in general, and another great poet from Arkansas was Henry Dumas.

- [Daniel] His prose was just so rhythmical.

It was so poetic, right?

It just felt like somebody was playing drums, right, as he was writing.

- [Janis] He was a small part of the Harlem Renaissance, as was Maya Angelou.

And I find that fascinating, the fact that two writers poet from Arkansas became a part of the Harlem Renaissance.

- He was such a brilliant young poet tragically killed in New York in 1968, and he in turn influenced so many writers after his death.

And in fact, most of his work was published posthumously.

Another great poet from Arkansas is C.D.

Wright, born in 1946 in Mountain Home, Arkansas, was maybe one of the best known American poets of the latter 20th century.

And her legacy as a writer continues with the C.D.

Wright Women's Writers Conference at Central Arkansas University and with the mission to recognize, promote, and encourage women writers with special emphasis given to writing inspired or written in the South.

- Even though she left Arkansas, she never stopped writing about the South and advocating for the South and for women.

And I admire that a great deal about her.

Most people know about the Little Rock Nine, that history, they don't know about Daisy Bates, the fact that she was the woman responsible for guiding that whole effort.

- Oh gosh, Daisy Bates, the words that come to mind, transformational, brave, a lightning rod of a woman.

- Her memoir from The Little Rock Nine time period was "The Long Shadow of Little Rock" and it won an American Book Award in 1988.

- Well, I did write a book about Daisy Bates and Daisy Bates' life story is amazing.

She was an orphan and from that, her whole persona as a woman who wanted to make a difference in the world began.

- She was a pioneer in every sense of the word.

And a woman who even at fear of death, she said, "We're going to stand anyway."

And I remember her story, I remember watching the story of The Little Rock Nine as a kid in rural Arkansas.

And I was so moved and I was so proud that just kind of down the road, if you will, metaphorically this kind of transformative civil rights work had happened.

And it just made me feel proud to be from a place like Arkansas.

- She and her husband, L.C.

Bates, Lucius Christopher Bates, published "The Arkansas State Press" in Little Rock in 1941.

And that was the newspaper that covered topics related to the civil rights and actually a lot more.

And it was distributed all around the state of Arkansas.

- [Janis] I love to share that my personal relationship with Daisy Bates is that in 1988, I purchased her newspaper from her and ran her newspaper for a number of years.

- In May of 2024, a bronze statue of Daisy Bates was unveiled in the National Statutory Hall in the United States Capitol as one of two Arkansans honored there.

Charles Portis was born in 1933 in El Dorado, Arkansas.

And he grew up in the southern part of the state, various towns in Union County where El Dorado is.

Portis was a reporter for "The Arkansas Gazette," and that was a reporter for "The New York Herald Tribune" for four years.

In 1964, he returned to Arkansas to write fiction full time.

- He went off and did what every newspaper guy said he was gonna do, which was like he rented a cabin and said he was gonna write the Great American novel.

And then he came back, you know, a year later with "True Grit."

You know, his ghost is heavy around here.

And I do think "True Grit's" a masterpiece, but man, he has four other novels, "Masters of Atlantis," "Norwood," "Gringos" and "Dog of the South."

And they're completely different than "True Grit."

I mean, they're hilarious.

And what he does that I like so much is when he portrays Arkansas, and it's something I always consider, you know, like as a guy who's writing novels set around Arkansas or with Arkansans as characters, it's a responsibility in some ways to try and portray your home place, honestly.

And I think Charles Portis did that and he did it with the touch of humor always and such a good ambassador for the state.

- I think Charles Portis is one of those writers that's unflinching.

And I think what resonates about his work is that it does make you uncomfortable and that it's honest and you can't look away.

- I think Portis is really recognized as a genius writer.

And he also has an award, there's a Portis award here in Arkansas.

- [Eli] So yeah, John Grisham was born in Arkansas, up in like northeast Arkansas.

So a little north of where I'm from.

- [Karen] John Grisham is iconic.

(laughs) He's just iconic.

I think such a compelling writer and it's really a gift to be able to write so prolifically for so long.

- [Daniel] I'm a Grisham fan really.

And of course Grisham has written, you know, 5,000 books, right?

But the thing I think that's so remarkable about Grisham is his courtroom scenes are just masters of literary art.

That man can write a scene in court, but what also, I think he's a master of his suspense.

And suspense can be hard because exciting the sensibility of a reader and then maintaining that suspense, right, over time in a text is a very difficult art to do.

- [Eli] When people think of an author, a novelist, a crime novelist, he's it.

Like John Grisham for people around here, he is the standard.

- [Karen] I know people who read nothing but John Grisham and to have the loyalty of readers who will exclusively read you and take every book that you put out, I think is incredible.

That's the goal.

- [Eli] What I respect most about that guy is the fact that he's still doing it, you know, like, and that there's still like... I'm four books in and I look at all the books he's done and the years he's done it, and I think, "My goodness," you know?

So yeah, growing up on a small farm in northeast Arkansas, I bet a lot of that discipline and stuff that he started there has has led on to that.

(upbeat music) - These voices from the past have paved the way for today's writers, many of whom carry their Arkansas roots into their work.

One of them is Daniel Black.

- Daniel Black, he's a renowned and award-winning author of literary fiction.

And he often writes about families and the African-American experience and also very often sets his work in Arkansas.

- I'm enormously concerned about an enormously committed to the process of healing period, but also the process of healing between generations of people.

"Isaac's Song" is the tension between fathers and sons.

His father did not understand anything about queerness.

And so his father spent a lifetime, certainly that boys younger years, trying to make him masculine, trying to make him something he could be proud of, trying to make him something that he believed God might be proud of.

But all he did was to wound him.

And it took Isaac's father Jacob a lifetime to realize trying to create an identity and give it to someone else is really an act of violence.

Once Jacob realizes that, he begins to write Isaac these letters, right, begging his forgiveness.

It's a complicated relationship between children and parents.

If you're going to love and adore your parents, at some point you're gonna have to forgive them for things that they believed was correct, that not only do you think was incorrect, but that might have in fact wounded you.

But it's not because they meant to wound you, it's because they meant to love you.

But sometimes love can be a very, very painful thing.

I'm hoping that book will make parents, especially fathers, reconsider what it means to shape children into you.

And give parents a little more faith that if you let a child be themselves in ways that that self will be something that you'll be proud of, even if you think you don't like it now.

That a child's discovery of themselves is really the greatest gift to parenting give them.

- Another author is Katy Duffield, whose picture books spring from her Arkansas upbringing and her lifelong connection to the outdoors.

- Katy's a prolific children's book author with more than 40 published books from major children's book publishers and she writes both fiction and nonfiction.

She's such a kind and thoughtful writer and I always can't wait to read anything by Katy.

- I started writing for children's magazines and so children's educational publishers, but my true love is writing picture books.

Spending time in Arkansas's biodiverse landscape, I mentioned how beautiful the outdoors are and I have such a great love of Arkansas outdoors.

And I closely observed the wildlife here and that's really shaped my love for the natural world, which is spilled directly over into my writing.

My rhyming ATV picture book "Start Your Engines," it's illustrated by Chiara Galletti.

It actually came just from hours and hours that my family has spent riding four wheelers on Arkansas back roads.

My nonfiction picture books also share that connection to nature.

I wrote a book called "Crossings: Extraordinary Structures for Extraordinary Animals."

It's illustrated by Mike Orodan and it's about how wildlife crossing structures around the world help keep animals and people safe.

My latest nonfiction book coming out this September is titled "We Are the Keytones" and it's illustrated by Hannah Salyer.

And it's about keystone species.

Keystone species are plants and animals that play such oversized roles in their environments that if they disappeared, their entire habitats could collapse.

So my hope is that my writing will help children fall in love with reading.

I want them to laugh and to learn new things and also to believe in themselves.

But most of all, I hope my stories promote empathy for nature, for wildlife, and especially for people.

- Among the voices of Arkansas writers today is Eli Cranor who brings a raw gritty edge to modern southern noir.

- I'd say that people would probably describe his books as fast-paced and gritty, southern noir, and there's just so much we're gonna see from Eli.

He's such a talented writer and so wonderful.

- My early books first came out, I remember my dad called me and he said, "Why'd you have to set it in Arkansas?"

That's exactly what he said.

And I think what he was trying to say was that like, I'd somehow made Arkansas look bad or I'd somehow extended the stereotype or something.

'cause a lot of my times, my books take a look at people that are on the fringes, people that are really struggling for some way or another.

There's a great author guy named Barry Hannah.

He used to say, you know, "I'll read anything, I'll say anything and I'll write anything, so long as it's true."

And so that was always kind of my brain.

Now the truth is subjective for me, but these were, you know, either experiences I'd had or I'd brushed up against through my life and I was just trying to get them as right as I could.

There were people on my football team in Florida who weren't even sure that Arkansas was a state.

So when you can take them not only to Arkansas but inside a chicken processing plant, when you can take them inside the locker room on a high school Friday night and what all comes with that, especially in a place that's not Texas, it's not "Friday Night Lights," there's not all the money and the glitz and the glam, you know, this is much smaller, in a lot of ways, much tougher.

I just want people to see what I think it's like here.

Be it that I'm stealing stories from people I know personally and I know that I will see them, you know, in Walmart, but I also think that's the live wire that breeds real life into it.

- One of the newer voices on the scene is speculative fiction writer Ayana Gray who reimagines Medusa through a blend of Greek mythology, identity, and self-discovery.

- Ayana Gray is just a wonderful young bestselling author whose first works were this series, this YA fantasy series, "The Beast of Prey."

And her most recent work, "I, Medusa," is a re-imagining of the Medusa myth and also a "New York Times" bestseller.

And she's such a gifted speaker as well as writer and definitely a staunch library supporter.

- I've been a writer my whole life.

Like I don't even remember when I started telling stories.

I just did, no one told me to.

So it feels like a core part of who I am.

I was a deeply imaginative kid and so that was my outlet was telling stories and writing.

So "I, Medusa" is a departure.

We're still engaging with myth, but this time engaging with Greco-Roman myth and the iconic figure of Medusa.

And this is a pseudo villain origin story that reimagines her as a young girl who is caught between ruthless and rivaling gods and sort of is to reclaim her story.

I think what I've always loved about speculative fiction, whether you're talking about science fiction or fantasy or historical fiction or any of the genre blends, is it lets you use your imagination and it lets you ask what if and it lets you ask why not.

And that has been my natural go-to since I was a child, to ask what if and why not?

And I appreciate getting to read and write and exist in a genre that encourages that.

What these stories have the power to do, in addition to promoting and increasing literacy is these stories build bridges.

When you plant yourself in a story about someone who isn't necessarily just like you, that builds empathy and compassion and you build on that as you get older.

And so I think it's more important than ever that we're telling stories from all sorts of perspectives and from all different walks of life.

(light calming music) - In Arkansas, libraries of every size help carry the state's storytelling tradition forward.

These welcoming spaces are where imagination thrives and future writers take root.

- This is a very rural state, but I will say that libraries and community in Arkansas is such a part of everyone's life here.

People love their libraries in Arkansas, which it's just really wonderful to see, people are always very supportive of them.

- I grew up in the era of segregation where segregation was lawful and I was not able to visit the library that I grew up with.

And I used to be very saddened that I could never visit the library 'cause that was something that I wanted to do.

I just think Little Rock has some really amazing libraries.

They do a lot of work to make sure that the libraries are accessible and open to to everyone.

CALS-Central Arkansas Library System has a main library, but it also has amazing libraries all over the city.

- And they're the ones who put on the Big Six Bridges book festival and have all sorts of really interesting things that they do and they just completely renovated their library.

It's beautiful, big glass facade, right there in the heart of Little Rock.

- Also as a child, the library that we most frequently visited was the John Gould Fletcher branch of the Central Arkansas Library System.

It was the closest library to our house and I still get excited thinking about that very first card.

That was like the key to opening a world of books for me.

- The Butler Center was created for the greater understanding and appreciation of Arkansas history, literature, art, and culture.

And I am as familiar with how some of our "Arkansas Gems" authors, which is a publication we do with the Center for the Book, how some of our authors have been able to access archival materials at the Butler Center in research for their books and other projects.

- I have two favorite libraries in the state of Arkansas.

One of them is literally two minutes from my house.

Terry Library in Little Rock was the library where I would go after school.

I was always welcomed, everybody was always kind.

I still go there to write sometimes.

It's just a safe place.

It's always been a safe place.

My second favorite library in the state is the Blair Library in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I went to college.

And it is gorgeous, it's just a beautiful library.

I went there a lot As a college student, as a post grad, I would go there sometimes to read and I would also just go there sometimes to sit outside 'cause there's a beautiful outdoor area and just look out into the Ozarks and kind of center myself.

So we're very lucky to have some fantastic libraries and librarians in our state.

- So Remote Access, small public libraries in Arkansas.

This was the dream of two photographers, Don House and Sabina Schmit.

And so they took photographs of these really small rural libraries around the state, but not only did they photograph the libraries, they photographed the library staff and you know, the library patrons, the people who use the libraries that really captured the heart of the communities of these like remote libraries all around the state, the people who work there and the people who really benefit from the use of these buildings.

It's just really a book with so much heart.

(upbeat music) - For book lovers who prefer to grow their own collections, Arkansas is home to many wonderful independent bookstores that make it easy for readers to fill their shelves.

- [Karen] Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, Arkansas is a long running independent bookstore that is just such a huge supporter of Arkansas authors that are very local, to give people just a really great opportunity to connect with an author and engage with the author on their writing.

- Wordsworth Books has been one of my biggest supporters and have teamed up on a lot of different stuff.

You know, Little Rock's our capital, it's our biggest city and that bookstore's been there for decades.

- I love their children's bookshelf, like it's one of the smartest, most thoughtful areas that I've ever seen in that these are books genuinely for teenagers.

They have books on everything.

I've never walked out of that bookstore without a book.

- [Karen] Paper Hearts Bookstore is just such a lovely little bookstore.

It's had a brick and mortar store just for a few years now and it's the Pettaway Square neighborhood in Little Rock.

They just have such a huge heart and they're really, really nice to work with and supportive.

They've supported some of our center for the book programs by, you know, running book sales and actually really kind of remote parts of the state that are farfield from Little Rock and just a lovely little bookstore with a lot of art.

- [Ayana] Pyramid Books, black-owned bookstore that also has a fantastic collection of art.

- [Janis] And it's wonderful.

They have artists that come in on a regular basis to talk about art and to exhibit art, but also they have authors to come in and talk about their books.

- Little Rock is of course one of the kind of capital cities when we think about the Civil Rights Movement.

And I think that Pyramid Books really honors that by continuing to celebrate Black culture, black storytellers.

You feel the history when you walk in and kind of the spectrum of what we as a black community have been where we are and where we're going.

- And a relatively new one that I have not visited yet, but I'm really looking forward to visiting is called Dad Suggests Books in Fayetteville.

And the reason I'm most excited about it is because it focuses solely on my favorite genre and that is children's books and it looks adorable.

There's this little round blue door that, you know, short blue door for the kids to go through and it looks really cute.

- Dog Ear Books is an independent bookstore in Russellville, which is near the Arkansas River Valley and they've really been so very supportive of local authors in the area.

I think that this is a recurring theme with our independent bookstores is how supportive they are of local areas.

- You know, these are the sort of people who, it's about books, but it's also about community building.

So you've got some retro arcade games, you've got a coffee place, you've got a bookstore, and it's really kind of the perfect place now it's all come together, and that's Dog Ear.

(joyful music) - Before you can understand a place, you often have to understand where its stories were born and Arkansas is full of literary landmarks that bring those stories to life.

- "True Grit Trail" tracks the journey of Mattie Ross in Charles Portis's best known seminal novel "True Grit."

- Across Dardanelle, there's Mount Nebo and Yale County and that's where Mattie Ross's whole journey in "True Grit" starts.

You know, she comes to avenge her father's death, she leaves Yale County, she goes all the way to Fort Smith and into Oklahoma and there on our interstates and highways you can follow the trail that's in the book.

And they have, you know, different little landmarks and stuff like that that have been added.

- When I think of Charles Portis, the author of "True Grit," I think of visiting Fort Smith National historic site when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old.

And at that site you can see the restored courtroom of Judge Isaac Parker.

He's the judge that plays a prominent role in Portis's novel.

He wasn't a fictional character, even though he appeared in the book, but he was an actual person.

- [Janis] Of course, we have the Clinton Presidential Library here, which I would suggest to anyone that they visit.

It is a library that has so much history.

- [Ayana] They did a whole exhibit about like the fashion of First Ladies where they had their clothing and a whole exhibit about the history of music and like hip hop lyrics and stuff.

So it is a library and an archive and the museum all in one.

- It has everything for everybody.

Students, young people, people who are writing about history, especially people who are writing about presidential history.

It's a great place to visit.

- One particularly notable and a maybe lesser known literary landmark in Arkansas is the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum in Pickett.

It's up in northeast Arkansas.

When Ernest Hemingway visited his in-laws there in oh the late 1920s, early 1930s, he would escape to a quiet space in the barn to write.

And that's actually where he worked on the first draft of one of his most famous novels "A Farewell to Arms."

- When I think about literary moments, I also think about just storytelling, oral stories, traditional stories.

And the Native American community in Arkansas has a really rich and incredible history.

And as I mentioned before, Arkansas was part of the Trail of Tears.

And so if you are near the Arkansas River, there are some land, there are some markers that mark specific areas and spots where the Trail of Tears came through.

And we don't talk about it as much as I would like.

We talk about the Civil Rights movement in Arkansas and that piece of its history.

But I think learning more about the Native American communities and the tribe's plural, that have lived and continue to live in Arkansas is important.

(calming music) - Today's literary journey in Arkansas is part of a bigger celebration.

2026 is the year that the United States celebrates its 250th birthday.

So we're exploring the stories, authors, and books that define each corner of this nation in partnership with the Library of Congress and local Centers for the Book.

- 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 a local Center for the Book in all 50 states in six territories.

Their 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 and 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.

We'll 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 Arkansas Center for the Book, which is housed in the Arkansas State Library in Little Rock.

- The Arkansas Center for the Book was established in 2000 at the Arkansas State Library.

One of our favorite programs each year, maybe even a flagship program, is If All Arkansas Read the Same Book and we bring the author to Arkansas for a tour to give presentations about their book and to talk about writing.

But it's just so wonderful to give readers the opportunity to meet an author that they really like and to engage with them.

The "Arkansas Gems" is an annual publication of the Arkansas Center for the Book, and primarily it's posters and bookmarks, but posters feature approximately 20 new works about Arkansas or by Arkansas authors.

But it's also a way that we can highlight local and regional literature to a national audience because we debut the works every year at the National Book Festival.

And after that, copies are sent to all public library branches in Arkansas.

It's a project that really has, you know, a far reach for not a lot of money to spend on.

So really, it's one of my favorites.

So the library bookhub lending program, we're able to support approximately 50 library book clubs, book clubs that meet in libraries around the state of Arkansas.

We particularly focus on libraries that are in more rural areas to be able to provide, you know, book club sets to them so their readers can meet and discuss and connect over books in this way.

It's really a popular program and I love supporting it.

- If you'd like to learn more about "Arkansas Gems" or their book club lending program, visit them online at library.arkansas.gov.

- Today's look into Arkansas's bookish culture has truly been inspiring.

Thank you again to the Library of Congress and the Arkansas Center for the Book for partnering with PBS Books as we journey across the country, exploring the books, authors, and places that define America's story.

- What about you?

Have you had a chance to visit any of these places, read these books?

Or if you're a local, tell us your favorite spots that out of town book lovers should visit in the chat or comments.

- And if our reading road trip has sparked your curiosity about the landmarks, authors and literary treasures in your own state, the Library of Congress is a great place to start.

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

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

- And don't forget to like and subscribe so you never miss an exciting episode from PBS Books.

And be sure to share this video with all of your friends to start planning your next reading road trip.

- Until next time, happy reading.

- Happy reading.

(joyful music) (joyful music continues) (light piano music)