- On this episode of "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip," we're heading to the Cowboy State!

- Join us for a close look into the literary heritage of Wyoming.

There are more cows than people, but there is no shortage of writers who have been inspired by its landscape.

From Ernest Hemingway's stays at dude ranches to Annie Proulx's "Postcards."

- [Fred] It's also home to some of today's most celebrated Western writers like C.J.

Box and Craig Johnson.

- When things shut down, that's a really good time to throw another log on the fire and keep writing.

- Join "PBS Books," the Library of Congress, and the Wyoming Center for the book on a literary adventure through Wyoming.

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

(lively orchestral music) - Hello and welcome.

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

- Join us as we uncover the books and writers that have shaped American culture and celebrate the stories that continue to build our shared literary heritage.

- Today, we explore the place that inspired the Western genre, Wyoming.

- From Rocky Mountain ranges to the wide open prairies, Wyoming is an extraordinary place where you can find true wilderness.

This unique setting has shaped its towns and people in a distinctive way, but how exactly has the Wyoming landscape shaped its writers?

- Wyoming is a more diverse base than we think, not just ideologically, but even with people.

- Wyoming is the ninth largest state in the United States like that, but it's dead last in population.

We have approximately a half a million people, I think, in the state of Wyoming.

I mean, and the fact that I live in a town of 26 kind of exemplifies that.

- People often say we're a small town with really long streets, but I love the way that community forms across really vast, open spaces here.

- It seems like the people who are here tend to have a lot of character and personality to fill the void.

- And also, Wyoming has varied terrain that changes drastically around the state.

This fact keeps our imagination and our adventures wide open.

- [Craig] Wyoming has 14,000 foot mountains, Yellowstone Park, it's got the Red Desert.

It's got all of these spectacular topography, like that.

It's very, very easy to get lost in.

- Whether you're looking at cowboy poetry or modern novels by C.J.

Box or Craig Johnson, it's very clear how much the landscape shapes our literature.

- The sort of creative juices that flow when you're around such amazing landscapes or sitting by a river is almost unparalleled anywhere else.

And I'm sure other places would say the same, but they're lying to you.

Wyoming is the best place for that sort of thing.

- As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, "PBS Books" and the Library of Congress invite you on a journey like no other.

In each episode of this series, we'll highlight a different region of the US and its literary impact on our nation, and we'll explore how each state's history books and authors tell its unique story.

- You might know that the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts in its collections.

- But what you might not know is that they've established a local Center for the Book in all 50 states and six territories.

Their mission, to make the Library of Congress and its resources even more accessible to all Americans.

- I'm Lee Anne 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 Wyoming Center for the Book located in Laramie, which has been coined the Gem City of the Plains for its many hidden treasures.

(gentle guitar music) - The landscape of Wyoming is something to be revered, and it takes some grit to live there full time.

In fact, a lot of historical authors only called Wyoming home for a short while.

Nonetheless, this great state held enormous significance for their works.

- We've all heard of Earnest Hemingway, a very famous author of several light classics such as "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "Old Man in the Sea."

But did we know that he spent an awful lot of time in Wyoming?

- He loved the mountains, just like I do, specifically the Bighorn Mountains, and he would go there in the summers between 1928 and 1939.

His writing was inspired by his views there and the quiet life.

- He's, you know, was originally from Michigan, but obviously, the West held a great deal, you know, of meaning to him.

Speaking of the Basque, I mean, you know, you can talk about, you know, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" like that, which is basically in the Basque regions.

And so, he became kind of connected with that aspect of Wyoming to a great extent.

- I think he appreciated the uniqueness of what it's like to live here and be here.

- To me, what relates to Wyoming with Hemingway is the spareness of the language.

But I just think that's spareness and sort of the spareness of our landscapes, the vastness of this place, and something about the way he captures landscape, I think the land is so important as a character.

- His descriptives, you know, of Wyoming.

I mean, I've heard it said before that France, in many ways, is an oil painting.

And if France is an oil painting, then Wyoming is a charcoal sketch.

You don't have to put all the detail in.

And what detail is there, you know, becomes very specific.

And I think that he understood that sparsity, not only in the art form, but also in the language.

- When people think Wyoming, they think cowboys, they think Westerns.

And we have Owen Wister to thank for that and his novel, "The Virginian," which is considered the first Western novel.

- It was a huge success.

It sold over 200,000 copies in the first year and was one of the top 50 selling fictional works, and has never been out of print and has sold over 1.5 million copies.

- Although he had a cabin in the state and he did stay in the state from time to time, he was a little bougie, so I don't think he quite understood what it was really like to be a Wyomingite on the frontier in this time period.

And he created what is known as, what we consider anyway, a myth of the West.

- The story, the characters, the cowboy creed, the outlaws, all the things he wrote about, I think, just kind of got burned into the national memory and thought process about what a Western is and what people are like out West.

- He did something really interesting, like that, and made them, you know, psychologically, you know, complex, like that, made them more complex novels with layerings and, you know, the beautiful descriptive passages that he had around Medicine Bow and all of those areas that he wrote about, and kind of elevated, you know, the Western to being something above, you know, dime store novels, like that, which, you know, "Boy, you know, here I am 100 years later."

And I'm pretty glad that he did that.

- We have Owen Wister's papers here at the American Heritage Center, so we have all of his diaries that he would take and he would record his experiences as he went through Wyoming.

We have his desk in our reading room, so that's always fun.

You see that on a daily basis.

So, you can't not remember "The Virginian" when you walk in because his desk is right there.

- Two Wyoming authors to explore are Annie Proulx and Mark Spragg.

And what strikes me about their writing as I'm reading it, there's this quality of the landscape being a character in the stories central to what is happening in shaping what's happening.

- Annie Proulx, I think, her three collections of stories, Wyoming stories, that's "Bad Dirt," "Close Range," the first one, and "Just the Way It Is," in some ways, really introduced a national audience to Wyoming as a literary place where literature happens or a focal point for literary content, which I love that about Annie Proulx.

I think in some ways, she opened a lot of space for other Wyoming writers to then work in and to be more familiar to a larger audience.

She's a beautiful writer, written beautiful books.

She no longer lives in Wyoming.

She tends to move a lot.

But while she was here, she wrote several books and short stories and collections.

Very, very hyper-local in a lot of ways.

And I know Annie and I really appreciate what she's done for the state.

And she's got kind of a hard eye sometimes on some of the characters, but sometimes, that's well deserved.

- The fact that, you know, that she's written such incredible pieces of work like "The Shipping News," and "Barkskins" and "That old Ace in the Hole," not to mention "Brokeback Mountain."

I mean, you know, she's not afraid of much, like that, and that's, you know, the kind of author that you wanna have in your state, like that.

And no matter what she would write, she could write grocery lists, like that, and, you know, they would still be on the best sellers lists, like that.

And so, I think here in Wyoming, we're glad to take her for about six years there.

- I think one thing about writers in Wyoming to consider is that up until recently, very very few of them were from the state.

They might visit, they may go to a dude ranch, they may go on a road trip and write about it.

So, the earlier writers who are associated with Wyoming tend to be the outside-in writers who might have chosen the state simply for the quiet or for the isolation, but weren't necessarily writing about it.

And when they did, sometimes, that comes off as inauthentic.

So, that's one thing I would kinda have a break between the older writers associated and the newer writers who are from here or live here.

- In a place like Wyoming, and where Wyoming might appear in literature that people have connections with, can focus on some archetypes, even stereotypes, some myths.

And I'm really excited about the writers I know working in Wyoming who are, they're not navigating in that territory.

They're really in new places.

Or if they're playing with myths in order to break them open and look at relationships in different ways, I feel like there's a lot more dynamic experiment happening in literature in Wyoming.

(lively guitar music) - While many wonderful writers from the past couldn't exactly call Wyoming their forever home, there is a renaissance of local authors who were proudly born and still reside in the state today.

One of the most notable is C.J.

Box.

- C.J.

Box is a sort of author who writes about a park ranger who often investigates everything from poaching to unusual crimes that take place.

- There were certain stories, real contemporary stories, that I was fascinated with, that I wanted to write about, but as I dug into 'em, I realized I could better tell these stories about contemporary topics by writing them as mysteries or crime thrillers.

But by interviewing people and by making the investigation in the books, you can dig into those things almost in a better way.

So, my very first book, I was writing about the endangered species law and how very well-intentioned laws sometimes go awry on the ground where they take place.

And so, I fictionalized that.

The book later became "Open Season."

The protagonist was a Wyoming game warden, and that was 26 books ago.

But each one has a topic in it, whether it's ecoterrorism, energy development, wind power, hunting ethics.

It's not ripped from the headlines necessarily, but are things that are people are talking about here.

I hope that, you know, many years from now, if somebody, a scholar, a reader, anybody with casual interest, is curious about what it was like to live in the mountain West, you know, in the 21st century, they will go to my books and get an idea of what it was like.

So, I kinda look at 'em as cultural snapshots, even though the books are marketed as mysteries and crime novels.

- While the Joe Pickett series is aimed toward adults, there are also some fabulous authors who are telling the stories of Wyoming for children, one of them being Casey Rislov.

- Casey Rislov is a children's author in the state of Wyoming.

And it's so great because Wyoming has a lot of authors and not all of them write about books for kids.

So, it's really nice that Casey is so available and accessible.

One of the ones I like to point out in particular is one of her newer books called "A Home for Steamboat," which is also one of Wyoming's picks to represent us at a national book festival.

- "A Home for Steamboat," it started with the love of this logo.

And Zach Pullen and I, the illustrator, we knew this was a big story to tell because of the fact that this logo can be found everywhere, in everybody's houses, and on everything, you know, even what they wear.

My book, "A Home for Steamboat," is a historical fiction picture book that discovers the history behind Steamboat.

This book shows how he became a beloved and famous horse.

We added important history in the back.

There's 48 pages of Zach Pullen's oil on canvas artwork versus the 32 pages that a children's book usually is.

And this book encourages one to have an independent spirit, to stay true to themselves, even when the tough gets going, and respect and help others do the same.

For us, Steamboat represents a lot of things, the Western Wyoming culture, which is ranching, it can be the rodeo sport, University of Wyoming, cowboys, wildlife, and more, and the landscapes.

- Not all exploration of Wyoming's literature is in long form.

In fact, Wyoming has a great scene for writers who use poetry to explore their past.

One of them being Matt Daly.

- Matt Daly is president of the Jackson Hole Writers.

He's based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is nearby the Yellowstone area in Teton County, so it's a very vibrant tourist community.

Matt is also a talented poet.

- I moved to Wyoming when I was in second grade and lived at the end of a little lane next to a ranch that had kids my age, cattle ranch.

And so, really grew up in these agricultural and sort of semi-wild lands at the edge of this ranch.

And I think that I know, really, that that rural, unstructured outdoor time had a huge effect on my imagination.

In terms of my journey as a writer, I think being in writing community has been really central.

And when my life as a writer felt like it gained some momentum, moved in a direction that's led to some work in the world and with readers, that all comes out of a really vibrant community of other writers, local, regional, national.

You know, just finding connection and community has been really essential to me.

- And no conversation about famous Wyoming authors would be complete without mentioning Craig Johnson, whose "Longmire" series has yielded tales of a sheriff in the West for over 20 years and counting.

- Wyoming has a lot of claims to fame, but Craig Johnson is one of those top people, people around the country.

And you mentioned Wyoming and books.

Craig Johnson's one of the first that they think about.

- I came to Wyoming outta Montana, like that, you know, I was in my twenties, like that, getting delivered horses down here into this little area.

There might be 300 people, like that, out here in the Powder River leading up into the Bighorn Mountains.

And I knew I always wanted to be a writer, and I thought, "You know, well, you know, maybe crime fiction would be something to do, like that."

And at that point in time, about 20 years ago, it seemed like everybody was writing noir.

Everything was all gritty, urban, you know, alcoholic divorced detectives burying bodies in their backyards.

And I thought, "Well, maybe if you wrote stories about the sheriff of the least populated county in the least populated state, you know, that would be something different."

And lo and behold, Walt Longmire was born.

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, 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.

I am here year 'round, like that.

I love it here, like that.

And I don't know.

The one time of course, like that, that's a little intimidating for people not from Wyoming, is the winter, like that.

And for me, that's my favorite time of year, when things shut down.

You know, when we get buried, you know, with snow, you know, and it's 40 degrees below zero outside and the wind's howling at 40 miles an hour, and all that.

That's a really good time to throw another log on the fire and keep writing.

And to me, that's, you know, part of the magic, you know, of where it is that I live.

(calm guitar music) - One of the best parts of any reading road trip is exploring local libraries.

Wyoming boasts wonderful libraries serving their communities, and even the largest archive west of the Mississippi.

- The American Heritage Center is, and I don't think it's any exaggeration to say this, the largest repository west of the Mississippi River.

It's massive.

Based in Laramie, Wyoming, it is shaped like a mountain.

So, as you enter, it's pretty wide.

And as you go up closer to the top where the research rooms are, it's just in a fairly small space, considering the size of the archive itself, but that is how it was designed.

So, it has a very distinct look on the Laramie skyline.

- The American Heritage Center is a gem that's not really widely known.

I used to be on the board of it.

It's an archive, a huge archive of not only books, but objects.

- I recently visited and scheduled an appointment with one of the librarians last spring because I wanted more information and photos of the Steamboat horse that I wrote about to share with schools when I visited, and boy, is there a lot of stuff.

- We are in the American Heritage Center on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie, Wyoming.

So, we have about 30,000 volumes and our books go all the way back to medieval manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts.

And we have about six of those in the collection.

And then we also have some cuneiform tablets.

So, we go back all the way to the beginning of the history of writing and all the way up to the present, like, with collections, including C.J.

Box.

We don't just collect Western writers or Western history, but that is an area that we are definitely more focused on now than we have been in the past.

And at the top end rear book library, some of the areas that we're really focused on increasing our book collections in is books by women and also books by Indigenous authors, or writers in the West or Wyoming specifically, so.

- It is an amazing facility, and also attached to it is an art museum.

So, if that's not enough, there's more.

- All around Wyoming, there are wonderful libraries, hidden gems.

Pinedale has a delightful library.

Dubois, Wyoming in Fremont County is a charming library.

The Laramie County Library in Cheyenne is a four-storey glorious library to visit.

Teton County has a terrific library.

- I mean, honestly, the Teton County Library in my hometown is delightful in part because it's so innovative in what libraries are now.

And the services that that library brings to meet the needs of our whole community, I think, is really dynamic that yes, there are great books there, there are a lot of other things there, too.

So, I love that.

I also love the library in Lander, Wyoming, which part of that library is Carnegie Library.

- Another Carnegie Library is in Lusk, Wyoming.

Lusk is a very small town you would never think about much of it.

Definitely a drive-through space.

And for Wyoming, that's saying something, 'cause a lot of towns are drive through.

In any case, the Carnegie library in Lusk is very much still intact and still in use to this day.

It's been modernized in a lot of ways, but it's still very much historically, integrity is still in place.

It's really, really cool.

- I think I was most charmed by was the one that's in Lusk, Wyoming.

Very small town, but a really magnificent old building.

And, you know, it is the center of town.

It's located right there, and it's well maintained, well kept up.

It's been fun to do events in the Carnegie libraries.

In fact, I've incorporated them into my book and that the game warden's wife, Mary Beth, runs a Carnegie library in the little town of Saddlestring, Wyoming.

All fictional, of course, but that's one of those things of, you know, going around the state, seeing these really great buildings, and incorporating them in the books.

- In Lander, Wyoming, the Fremont County Library System started with a Carnegie library, a $15,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie and a commitment by the county to provide a library for its citizens.

We use our Carnegie library for meeting room spaces, for small performances, for civic engagement meetings.

Really, it's a community resource that connects us to our past while still taking us into the future.

(gentle guitar music) - Of course, libraries aren't the only places where Wyoming's love of book shines.

The rugged state is also home to some quirky and cool bookstores that you can't find anywhere else.

- When it comes to bookstores in Wyoming, there are some that you're really amazed exist.

At least, I'm always amazed that exists, and I'm not unhappy about that.

It's great.

So, one of the most prominent ones, it's the most unique, is called "Mad Dog and The Pilgrim Booksellers."

It's based in Sweetwater Station, Wyoming, which, if you wanna know where that is, it's pretty much literally in the middle of nowhere along Highway 287.

- And their sign that greets you is, "Old books and fresh eggs."

Definitely unique, unique, wonderful place to stop.

- [Lucas] Storyteller, located in the historic Thermopolis Downtown District.

The Storyteller in particular is not just a bookstore, it's also a coffee shop with really great homemade coffee.

And I say homemade as in terms of Jackrabbit Coffee is a very local coffee.

- And they actively promote local talent, including artists that create handmade pottery and license plates and mugs.

They have plenty of room to enjoy reading or enjoy that cup of coffee.

- [Lucas] It is serving a lot of that function of a community space as well.

They have authors that swing in from around the country to visit with folks who are in there to sign books and to exist.

The Storyteller is worth a stay.

And it's also in a historic building that's quite old, over 100 years old.

So, it's very nice.

- Wind City Books in Casper, Wyoming is really delightful bookstore.

They also do a lot of events, which is great.

- It's an independent bookstore that's been around for 18 years, and it houses 20,000 books in stocks, so it's a pretty good sized bookstore.

You love it from the time that you look at it.

It has big, beautiful windows that are always enticing you with the newest books.

Oh, and then one more thing about Wind City Books that has to do with Zach Pullen, my illustrator, and I actually read somewhere, I don't think there's another bookstore that has this, he created character portraits of authors that have done great things locally and, you know, your big ones, too, that are framed and hung on one side of the wall, and it's a neat, one-of-a-kind thing.

You can go in and look at it in City Books.

- Well, one of my favorite bookstore in Wyoming is the Second Story Books in Laramie, in downtown Laramie.

- The Second Story, not only is it just a wonderful classic bookstore attached to the Night Heron, which is a coffee shop and used bookstore.

They have an interesting partnership where on the top floor, there's access between the two buildings, so you can shop in both places.

That's really nice.

But the Second Story is great historic provenance is that it was once a brothel, and in fact, the rooms themselves in various categories of books, such as nature or biographies, et cetera, et cetera, you can find them in individual rooms that are in place.

Today, books are on display, but you can see exactly how the brothel functioned from this space, is that well intact.

It was pretty cool.

- The Valley Bookstore has been around for over 50 years, maybe over 60 in Jackson Hole.

There was a long-time owner.

It's changed hands a couple of times since then, but Valley Bookstore is owned by a writer now who I went to high school with, like sort of Wyoming space.

But it just, like, the history of that bookstore and the way that it has featured local and regional writers has been really delightful.

(bright guitar music) - This road trip through Wyoming wouldn't be complete without pulling over to admire some of its stunning landscapes with stories to tell.

Whether shaped by nature or built by human hands, these stops are rich with history and full of inspiration for writers.

- I used to be involved in the tourism industry before the books took off, so I'm very well versed in the highlights.

Most people know, obviously, about everybody in America should go to Yellowstone Park, world's first national park.

It's still as unique as it was when... I mean, imagine people who never even thought of the concept going to a place where they said, "This has to be the national park.

It's so unique."

- There's a great origin there where the initial exploration of that area, people didn't believe it, right?

Like John Colter comes back with these stories of what was there, and people thought he'd, like, was hallucinating or having visions or something.

They couldn't believe that that existed.

And that feels like the literary aspect of Yellowstone to me, is this fantastical landscape that actually exists.

(laughs) - One place that is iconic in American culture is Devil's Tower in Northeast Wyoming, and this was featured prominently in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

- There's a lot of Native American stories behind it.

And they tell you there's a sign that has all the stories behind it.

They talk about a bear, 'cause it looks like bear claws, the way it's built.

And so, those are really fantastic stories.

- I'm always gonna be a proponent of the Bighorn Mountains.

Like that, the Bighorn Mountains are absolutely spectacular.

They're almost 14,000 feet tall.

Like that, the wilderness area, like that, their Cloud Peak wilderness area is about the size of Rhode Island, like that.

And, you know, there's no roads, there's no electricity, there's nothing allowed in there.

If you wanna go in, my statement about it is, you need to go buy leather.

You either go buy saddle leather or buy shoe leather is what you're gonna do.

- [Casey] This is a gorgeous place to camp, fish, and hike and be surrounded in mountain country.

There's several towns like Sheridan and Buffalo that you can start at.

And you heard that Ernest Hemingway, he spent 12 summers there being inspired.

- Hemingway was all over the state of Wyoming, especially in the northern part.

So, you can find places where he stayed, ranches where he stayed all over the state - Here in Laramie, he stayed at a historic home called the Cooper House, as well as a few bars, good stories.

But the most famous one perhaps is when he stayed in Cody at the Chamberlin Inn in 1932.

Not only does the Chamberlin Inn have a guest book with his signed name, is how we opened up this whole can of worms to research it, we also learned that he finished his manuscripts for "Death in the Afternoon" while staying in that very hotel.

- But anyone interested in the, you know, east-to-west migration in the United States and the country and during the frontier should go to Independence Rock, 'cause it just sits there like a monolith in the middle of a desert.

It's made out of granite, it's covered with frontier graffiti, meaning pioneers who carved their name into the rock as they passed through.

- [Lucas] We have evidence that dates back from 1824, give or take, of the first names being written on this rock.

And these are the names of pioneers and homesteaders moving across, either to California or moving to any places in between Wyoming to California.

They would carve their names on the side of this rock, and they would tell stories in the side of this rock and they would talk about the date and what happened to them on the side of this rock.

And from there, we can expedite all sorts of stories that occurred from each of these names, their own individual style and with a chisel.

It's amazing how many different handwritings there are done with a chisel.

It's amazing.

- [Anita] These are special places, but Wyoming is full of special places.

And any amount of time that you spend in the state is going to enhance your reading experience of anything about Wyoming.

(gentle guitar music) - At the heart of Wyoming's literary treasures is the Wyoming Center for the Book dedicated to nurturing a lifelong passion for reading and discovery.

Their mission is to unite people through a shared love of reading and writing across the state's wide open spaces.

That commonality brings people together.

Here's a look at how they do it.

- Pronghorn Reads, I love this program.

The whole point of the program, think of it as a statewide book club.

So, every month, we challenge readers of all ages to read a book within a particular theme.

So, although we have a theme, we try to keep the themes big enough to allow people to read anything they want within that interpretation.

So, we even say to folks, "Read a book about Wyoming."

So you had books written about Wyoming, Pennsylvania, right?

Which is totally fine 'cause we didn't specify.

So, we allow that sort of interpretation, and that's the whole point.

And then we ask people to read them.

Once they read the book, they give us a short explanation of why they picked it, why they think it fits in the theme, and what they thought about the book.

They send it to us and then we share it in a mass reading list that we share with everyone in the state to say, "Look what your neighbors are reading this month."

And we've seen amazing interactivity this way.

Even local book clubs popping up around the state focused around it is really cool.

I'm really proud of it, actually.

We're working on book club kits that are sort of build-your-own program.

So, wannabe book club or book club that already exists or some reading group, or any group really, can order from us a set of 30 books, for example, "Democracy Under Construction" or any other book that's related to anything that we're doing.

And they'll get copies of the book as well as a reading guide to help them through that book, so we're basically home-making this.

And the guide is flexible enough, not just Q&A questions, which are definitely included, but allow for suggestions for other activities that they can do surrounding the book.

The "What's Your Why" podcast focused a lot about asking authors and creators their why, not necessarily the projects that they're specifically working on, but our host, Emy diGrappa, would ask them specifically, "What inspires you to make what you make?

Not make your specific thing, but why did you get started?

Why are you a historian today?"

It really gets down to that core value of who they are as people, which is really cool.

And actually, you get a lot of insight, and really focuses on people outside of the state of Wyoming.

There's a few in-state, but a lot of them are from around the country.

- If you'd like to explore more of the featured themes of the Pronghorns Reads Challenge, listen to one of their podcasts, or simply want to learn more, visit thinkwhy.org.

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

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

Visit pbsbooks.org/readingroadtrip or loc.gov to discover more and keep your literary adventure going.

- What a fantastic journey we have had through Wyoming.

Thank you again to the Library of Congress and Wyoming Center for the Book for partnering with "PBS Books" on "American Stories: A Reading Road Trip."

- I think a hike through the Grand Teton National Park sounds like a great getaway, and I'd love a chance to see a moose in person.

What about you?

- Well, I think I would enjoy checking out some of the old saloons where you might find writers with stories to tell.

- Absolutely.

What about you?

Have you had a chance to visit any of these sites?

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

- And if you're looking for more literary inspiration, be sure to visit your local library or the Library of Congress to get started on your own literary adventure.

- 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.

- [Both] Happy reading!

(lively orchestral music) (gentle piano music)