(warm curious music) - Hello, PBS Books Readers Club.

This month we're taking you cover to cover coast to coast to highlight authors from across America.

Whether you're interested in nonfiction, Westerns, crime thrillers, or stories of resilience and reinvention, these are just a few books that celebrate the vast and varied voices of our nation.

- [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.

- Welcome to the PBS Books Readers Club.

I'm Fred Nahhat here with Lauren Smith.

And in celebration of America 250, we thought it would be fun to take a moment to share just some of our country's remarkable writers on today's literary scene.

- If you have a favorite book that captures the spirit of your home state or one written by an author who calls your state home, drop it in the comments right now.

All right, Fred, let's get started.

Where should we start?

- Well, if we're talking about our nation's story, then of course we start on the East Coast where it all began, one of the first states in the nation and where the Declaration of Independence was signed, Pennsylvania.

- Great choice.

So many interesting writers have called Pennsylvania home, including Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and Benjamin Franklin.

Did you know that among Franklin's many innovations and inventions, he founded the Library Company of Philadelphia, which was the first successful lending library in the Colonies.

- It is so fascinating, but let us also not forget Mr.

Rogers.

His neighborhood was right there in Pittsburgh.

- One modern author that I'd love to point out who proudly calls Philadelphia home is Jennifer Weiner.

She has written over 20 novels, including bestsellers like "Good in Bed," "In Her Shoes," and most recently, "The Breakaway."

For her, it's not just chick lit.

It's a deeper message that she's hoping to get across.

- "Good in Bed" was the story of a woman who had gotten dumped and had gotten her heart broken and decides that, like, how she's gonna solve all of her problems, the thing that's going to fix everything is if she can lose some weight.

It turns into a story about bodies and self-esteem and how women move through the world and what really matters and who you really are and what a happy ending looks like.

And I think that those are the questions that my books have considered over the years.

If anybody comes away reading my books feeling a little braver and a little more courageous and a little more willing to like live authentically, I think that is what I want.

That's what I hope for.

- From the East Coast, we travel next to the Midwest.

Ohio is the birthplace of Superman and seven US presidents.

It's safe to say this state has had a lasting impact on our nation.

- And so many remarkable writers, and poets, have come out of Ohio, including Toni Morrison, Rita Dove, Mary Oliver, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose line, "I know why the caged bird sings" would later inspire the title of one of Maya Angelou's most famous works.

- Well, what's really exciting is that the tradition of spoken word and verse are still hugely relevant in Ohio today.

One of the best examples is Hanif Abdurraqib.

He writes not only powerful poetry, but also essays.

His first collection, "They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us," was named Book of the Year by several publications in 2017.

And he has continued to write and receive much acclaim for his work, including being awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant in 2021.

- As a writer, I am kind of a mashup of all the Ohio writers I love and all the Ohio writers I read.

And, you know, I came up in poetry slam in the poetry slam scene.

So many of those writers are not published in a traditional sense.

Many of those writers are writers I saw on stages reading one poem I loved and then I only ever wanted to write one book.

I wanted to write a poetry book, which came out in 2016 called "The Crown Ain't Worth Much."

And that was gonna be it for me, honestly.

I've written now six books and I think they're very wide-ranging.

Some of them are, I mean, I've written a book about A Tribe Called Quest.

I've written an essay collection that centers largely around music.

I've written another poetry book.

I've written a book about Black performance.

My latest one is about basketball and place in Ohio.

What's real is that all my books are about place and desire and to some extent grief and loss.

And I'm just kind of using these topics as a lens to get to that point.

- Hanif is a great example of the power of words.

So before we continue to head west on our book tour, let's take a quick detour and turn south to Georgia.

Author Carmen Agra Deedy describes this state as a veritable patchwork quilt of storytelling cultures and she is not wrong.

- No, absolutely.

You've got "Gone with the Wind," Flannery O'Connor, whose farm of peacocks you could still visit today, by the way.

And of course, Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."

- "The Color Purple" is iconic.

And believe it or not, Sue Monk Kidd, another beloved Georgia author and author of "The Secret Life of Bees," has said that Alice Walker's work helped shape her own writing along with her childhood in a small rural town.

- Well, my first novel, "The Secret Life of Bees," was heavily inspired by and drawn from my little hometown.

It was always in the back of my mind, my hometown, and my experiences of growing up in the '50s and '60s is that I came of age in the pre-feminist, pre-civil rights, religion-possessed South.

That is a narrative I was born under and in a way I've been trying to rewrite that narrative for a very long time.

I think it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said, "Geography is fate."

And that is certainly true of me and my writing.

I was deeply influenced by that narrative.

- From the loamy landscape of Georgia, we now head west to Wyoming, a wide-open state where there are more cows than people, but no shortage of stories.

- Wyoming has such an interesting evolution of storytellers.

You've got Owen Wister's "The Virginian," which defined the Western genre along with all sorts of tales that fed into this myth of the West.

And now today's authors are rewriting those narratives to have a much more accurate reflection.

- To name a few, you've got Annie Proulx's "Postcards," C.J.

Box and his "Joe Pickett" series, and even Craig Johnson's critically acclaimed "Longmire" series, which takes a gritty spin on Western crime dramas while still feeling authentic to modern Wyoming.

- There's just so much more, you know, to Wyoming than a lot of people think.

I mean, they see the cowboys and the Indians and they believe that that's, you know, that's what Wyoming is, like that.

But it's certainly much more complex and certainly much more complex in the current era.

You know, I mean, that's the thing.

I'm not really writing about 1890s or 1880s.

I'm not talking about the wild, wild West.

I think that when you write about a place, the one thing that you really owe it is an honesty.

You know, you need to be honest about it.

So I've made a bet with myself if I ever write a book about al-Qaeda in Crook County, Wyoming, or try and put Walt on a cruise ship, I know that I've reached the end of my tether and that I need to start writing something else.

- Continuing across the country, we pause in the Pacific Northwest in Washington, the Evergreen State.

- Washington has produced such a wide range of writers from Jess Walter, "The Cold Millions," to Newbery Medalist Donna Barba Higuera, and Sasha taqwsheblu LaPointe, whose "Red Paint" reflects on her experiences as a young Coast Salish punk.

I mean, the list goes on and on.

- One author I find especially impressive is Timothy Egan, who brings a narrative approach to historical nonfiction.

He's won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his writing, which makes sense because crafting a compelling, true and accurate retelling of history is no easy feat.

- The best thing anyone ever says to me when I go and do one of my talks, readings, or lectures somewhere is that, "God, I didn't know history was this interesting because I see drama, I see people coming of age, losing everything, gaining everything.

I see a clash of ideas.

I see all the elements of fiction," of good fiction, I should say.

You know, a rise and a fall, falling in love, falling in hate, all these things that are make good fiction I see in history.

And I always say to people, I said, "I actually don't think there's anything such as bad history.

There's just badly told history."

(gentle music) - Going even further north to the second-to-last state to join our union and very notably the largest and coldest, it's Alaska.

- Storytelling has been central to Indigenous communities in Alaska for centuries with traditions passed down from one generation to the next through song, dance, spoken word, and even story knives used to draw scenes in the ground as the story unfolds.

- And one contemporary artist carrying those traditions forward is author and illustrator, Michaela Goade.

She became the first Native American illustrator to win the Caldecott Medal for "We Are Water Protectors."

Her books, including "Berry Song," celebrate Indigenous traditions, place, and the natural world in a way that feel accessible to all audiences.

- So "Berry Song" and "Moon Song" are part of a continuing series called "Song of the Seasons."

And "Berry Song" is summer.

"Moon Song" is winter.

And I'm working on the autumn book now, and then later, spring.

And these books are really inspired by Southeast Alaska, you know, about place, placemaking.

And they're inspired by my childhood in part, but also just wanting to really celebrate this region and the beautiful seasons we have here.

One of the ways I thought I could go about that was through our traditional wild foods.

So yeah, it's really like a celebration of place and trying to capture this unique spirit through a cultural lens, but also hopefully speaking to a really wide audience.

- And just to circle back into the Lower 48, we'll wrap up our American book tour in Utah, home to some amazing environmental writers.

And with a landscape that is so otherworldly, it's easy to see why.

- Yeah, I love the way a lot of these authors have personal connections.

Like, did you know that Edward Abbey, who wrote "The Monkey Wrench Gang," took writing classes from Wallace Stegner, who's known for many works, including "Angle of Repose"?

And did you also know that both of them are considered mentors by the highly esteemed writer, Terry Tempest Williams?

- Well, it is no wonder.

Her work is so powerful.

The way she's able to weave together environment, family, and advocacy in a poignant work of nonfiction is truly to be admired.

- I would hope that my work would be a call to paying attention, which is I think what Utah asks us again and again and again to pay attention.

To pay attention to the Red Rock desert, to pay attention to the Colorado River, to pay attention to Great Salt Lake in times of flood and in drought.

And more importantly, to pay attention to who we live among, that we pay attention to what does it mean to be human and to find that beauty in a broken world and realize that the interior landscape is deeply influenced by our exterior landscape.

And when we bring those two landscapes together, we create a story.

(bright music) - If you've enjoyed our journey exploring some of the writers in the states we covered today and you want more, well, I have good news.

There is plenty more where that came from in our watch-alike this month.

"American Stories: A Reading Road Trip."

It's another great PBS Books program where each episode features a different state or territory and its bookish culture.

"Reading Road Trip" introduces you to contemporary American writers and takes you through pages from the past, favorite libraries, bookstores, and landmarks along the way.

You can watch all the episodes that have already been released and catch new episodes on our PBS Books YouTube channel or on pbsbooks.org/readingroadtrip and on the PBS app.

- And if you're getting into the America 250 spirit, I know you'll love diving even deeper into revolutionary history with "The American Revolution," a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt.

This sweeping new documentary series brings America's fight for independence vividly to life through gripping storytelling and the voices of historians and citizens who lived the Revolution.

- From the ideals of liberty to the contradictions of slavery, it's a powerful portrait of the people and struggles that shaped our nation.

You can stream all six episodes on pbs.org and the PBS app.

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- Love that one.

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- Thank you, book friends, for joining us today.

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(bright music continues) (bright music continues) (gentle 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.