- Join us as we explore the literary heritage of Georgia.

- [Fred] From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the barrier islands in the Atlantic to the trendy metropolis of Atlanta, this state has more than just diverse geography, but a rich literary history, from "Gone with the Wind" to the works of Flannery O'Connor.

- It's also the home state of some of the most notable writers of today, like Sue Monk Kidd and Jericho Brown.

- Join PBS Books, the Library of Congress, and the Library's Affiliate Center for the Book on a literary adventure through Georgia.

This is "America's Stories: A Reading Road Trip."

Well, hello and welcome.

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

- Join us as we explore the books that have shaped American culture and celebrate the stories that have inspired our nation's literary heritage.

- [Fred] Today we explore the literary contributions of Georgia, the Peach State.

- 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 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, video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts in its collections; but what you might not know is that they have 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.

Through each Center for the Book, you'll find support for local literary events, reading programs, and community engagement that fosters a love of books and reading nationwide.

- 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.

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 director for the Georgia Center for the Book, located in Decatur, Georgia, which is less than 30 minutes east of Atlanta.

Its vibrant history and colorful current affairs makes it an amazing destination for book lovers.

With a landscape as soulful as a gospel hymn and as colorful as a Savannah spring, Georgia is steeped in stories passed down on porches and through generations.

It's no surprise the state has birthed some of America's most beloved writers.

So what is it about Georgia that keeps the stories flowing and the pages turning?

- I think what makes Georgia so special and unique as far as our literary history is concerned is the wealth of known authors that are in the readers' canon as well as local homegrown talent, but also the historical aspects of Georgia literature, the preservation of those historic sites and authors' homes to act as points of inspiration, to act as points of meditation.

- Georgia is a great place for people who love books, love reading, love stories.

It's a veritable patchwork quilt of storytelling cultures.

- Georgia has this very rich tradition of storytelling.

Erskine Caldwell, a Georgia-born writer, pointed out that Southern writers learned storytelling from listening to oral tales.

- The big difference between other Southern states and Georgia I think is Atlanta.

There's such a sense of culture and history here.

I mean, it's part of our upbringing.

We drink it from our mother's milk, this long storytelling tradition and a love of all things South.

- One of my favorite things about Georgia is Atlanta, and Atlanta has always been the Black mecca for thought and entertainment and intellect and dance and fun, and I love Atlanta.

- And you know, I'm gonna have to say we boast incredible libraries with at least one in every county, serving every community with unique and specially curated collections and programs.

- You cannot go five feet without running into a story, a bookstore, or a library.

- With such a deep-rooted love for literature, it's no wonder why so many amazing authors have hailed from Georgia.

- Georgia has given us an abundance of authors, from the haunting tones of Southern gothic to the powerful voices of the civil rights era.

- [Karin] You can't talk about Georgia without Margaret Mitchell - "Gone with the Wind" has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the bestselling books of all times.

I think that may be our very best known book that really captures that moment in history for so many people, and for people who aren't familiar with the South.

- One of the reasons why we're so lucky actually to have "Gone with the Wind" is because after Caroline Miller won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934 for "Lamb in His Bosom," all of these publishers raced down to Georgia and really shook out, right, some of the most amazing writing, including "Gone with the Wind."

- Peg Mitchell was writing this novel and stuffing portions of it under seat cushions in her basement apartment, hiding it from friends and colleagues.

The publishing houses found it and published it and "Gone with the Wind" became a phenomenon, winning the second Pulitzer Prize for Georgia.

- On its surface, it's really just such an amazing feat of storytelling, what you find with "Gone with the Wind," but it's also a very important book in the creation of the Lost Cause theory.

It's a stain on not just the South, but on America as a whole.

I think you can't talk about one without talking about the other.

- As the Georgia saying goes, that everybody in Georgia has three books sitting on a shelf in their house.

One is the Bible and two are copies of "Gone with the Wind."

- When I think of Georgia, one of the things I really like to think about is Southern gothic, which is this literary tradition that's deeply rooted in the South, and there is nowhere that you can think about Southern gothic more than Georgia.

At the heart of the genre is Carson McCullers.

- Carson McCullers was from Columbus, Georgia.

She's known for her works "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," "The Ballad of Sad Cafe," and "A Member of the Wedding," and is quite well known for her books being required reading in many schools across the country.

- One of the things I love about Carson McCullers is her understanding of the variability of human nature, of not from person to person, but even within ourselves, our duality.

How her characters, once you read them, are people that you go, "Oh, I know him."

- There's so many layers and you come to it as a reader, but I think you leave as someone with a deeper understanding of humanity.

- [Heather-Marie] Also when we consider Georgian Southern gothic, you have Flannery O'Connor.

- There's a rather esteemed editor of Southern Literature who created some characteristics of Southern writing, and one of them was they have a celebration of eccentricity, and this really describes Flannery O'Connor.

- There's straight definitions of Southern gothic and Flannery O'Connor is the rubric for that.

And just the idea that you can use these stories to tell a greater commentary about the human condition.

That was a revelation to me, and it made me understand that storytelling isn't just for fun.

It's also a powerful tool to peel off that scab on the human condition.

- [Joe] In the past few years, Lillian Smith has really seen a resurgence for her importance to the civil rights movement and speaking out against segregation and discrimination.

Her book, "Strange Fruit," featured an interracial love affair, was banned across the country when it was published.

- This is something that at that time was so taboo, and yet she was trying to address these social issues in her writing and share it with more people to get them thinking about what was happening right in Georgia.

- What a daring book for its time, "Strange Fruit."

As a writer, she broke a lot of rules, and she wrote about a lot of them, before the civil rights era she was writing this book, a very needed voice at a very early time.

It's the first little shoots that were going up from the ground.

Those first little voices, she was one of them.

- [Karin] Then there is John Lewis.

- [Joe] Congressman John Lewis, before he was, of course, Congressman John Lewis was part of the civil rights movement.

He published his own autobiography that later was turned into a graphic novel.

- So the "March" series that John Lewis and Andrew Aydin put together is a great introduction to his role in the civil rights movement.

As many people know, he was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday.

He marched for our freedoms.

He spoke at the March on Washington.

Having it in comic book form I thought was really a great idea, because it's an accessible way, it's not intimidating, so people can see what was going on.

And that's what John Lewis was all about, reaching out to young people, telling the story, and inviting them into history.

- He's a person that I think about a lot.

He was always willing to resist, to protest.

The fact that he understood that he had a story to tell and that this was a new and exciting way to tell that story and to get it to even more people.

- And so it really speaks to a lot of young people and they get to learn about the civil rights movement in the 1960s and they get to understand the importance of John Lewis' and Martin Luther King's work, and why we are where we are today as well, and to really reflect how far we've come and also the work we still have to do.

- To be able to access this and understand it and see what a remarkable man he was, I mean, as a role model, you couldn't ask for anyone better.

- Well, no conversation about American literature would be complete without a conversation of Alice Walker.

Alice Walker is from Eatonton, Georgia, and her "The Color Purple" is probably one of the most iconic books that exists.

- [Karin] Well, what Alice Walker did, I think, is that she added a voice to the canon, and those voices are the ones that fill in those gaps in oral history and in the history in our books.

- Alice Walker's influence really gets traced back to an understanding of intersectionality.

It is true that you have experiences as a person of color in this country, and it is also true that you have experiences as a woman in this world.

When those come together, you have a very specific kind of what Alice Walker called double jeopardy.

- Alice Walker is such an inspiration for me, so seeing her go from rural Georgia and then being the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, it really shows you where you can go in life.

- [Joe] "The Color Purple," which won several literary awards, was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, was turned into a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical that debuted here in Atlanta.

- I think probably the writer born in Georgia who had the most influence on me and my work is Alice Walker, and I think there are echoes of that in my own work that maybe were inspired by reading that book.

- All these years later, it still holds up and it still is amazingly powerful, and any writer would be happy to be able to say that about one story, but to have just her body of work is just shockingly wonderful to me.

- Alice Walker is truly a national treasure.

We are so fortunate to have voices like hers still inspiring readers today.

- Yes, there are some remarkable writers in Georgia to this day.

Another that comes to my mind is Karin Slaughter, author of over 20 novels, including the "Grant County" and "Will Trent" series.

- Karin Slaughter is a well-known thriller writer who is a native Georgian.

She truly has the perfect last name for a thriller writer, if ever there was one.

- I started writing in Georgia because they say write what you know, but I also think it's important to write what you want to know.

And as someone who moved out of Jonesboro as soon as I graduated from high school and was very happy to live in Atlanta, I was looking back with some perspective on small towns.

And there are good things about small towns, but there are some some really bad things that we don't really talk about, and my grandmother was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of my grandfather.

Looking back, I know that our silence only protected my grandfather.

It never protected my grandmother.

And so when I started writing, I wanted to write from a woman's perspective what that violence was really like.

It's not titillating, it's not sexy, it's not a private matter.

On the surface, if you just wanna take a book of mine to the beach and have good read, that's there, it's very thrilling, it grabs you by the collar and pulls you to the last page, but if you want a deeper understanding, that's there too.

- From horror to humor, these writers span all genres, including children's authors, like Carmen Agra Deedy.

- Carmen Agra Deedy of course lives here, right outside of Decatur, Georgia.

She is a children's book author and storyteller.

She is known for her books "The Library Dragon" and "The Library Dragon Returns," as well as "14 Cows For America."

- I walked into this little library in Middle Georgia.

I was going to speak to the children, and as soon as I walked in, I was greeted by this little tiny gnome of a librarian with a very scratchy voice, very, very.

And it was actually really wonderful because it was going to serve me later in the story.

I didn't have a story yet though, until I glanced around this library and saw that an entire quarter of the library, the early readers, were roped off.

And I said, "What's happening here?"

"Oh, those are the little children."

And I said, "Those are little children's books?"

"Yes, but they can't touch them, not without me."

I said, "They can't touch them?"

And she looks at me as if I am the one who is a mad hatter, and says, "Oh darling, if I let these little children touch these books with their peanut butter and jelly fingers and their noses like rubber cement, this library wouldn't last a week!"

And I said, "Oh my word, woman, you're a dragon!"

And she was not fazed in the slightest.

She turned to me, beamed, and said, "I'm a library dragon!"

And I went, "Oh my."

Sometimes stories are just placed right in the palm of your hand.

- It turns inside out.

So here is the nice librarian when children take good care of books and return them on time and don't get them dirty.

And then, of course, she turns into the library dragon when children don't return books on time and get books dirty.

- I love that library dragon!

Of course, not every story is told in paragraphs and plot lines.

Some of Georgia's deepest truths are captured in verse, words that linger in the heart long after the page is turned.

- And Georgia doesn't just nurture poets; it's the birthplace of an entirely new style of poetry.

One of our greatest living poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, is both a state and national icon.

- I invented a form called the duplex.

The duplex is at once a hustle, a sonnet, and a blues poem.

At least two of those forms people are pretty familiar with, definitely people love the blues, and the form is the amalgamation of those other forms, because I am always seen in this world as a kind of mutt.

I tell people things about myself given the different communities that I'm a part of, and it's almost unbelievable to them.

(laughs) And so me inventing that form had to do with the fact of holding several identities at once in a single form.

One of the things that really inspires me as a writer in Georgia is I feel myself as a part of this larger tradition.

I always think of Atlanta as the seat of the civil rights movement.

The Ebenezer Baptist Church is here where Martin Luther King went and was the pastor.

It's a place where so much happened in history, that as long as I am here, I am always in a position to just look out the window and there's something inspiring going on.

- And we can't talk about George's contemporary voices without celebrating Sue Monk Kidd, the beloved author of "The Secret Life of Bees," "The Invention of Wings," and "The Book of Longings."

Her unforgettable stories of family, faith, and freedom continue to captivate readers around the world.

- 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.

- One thing all these authors share is a love for libraries, and they should.

Georgia is home to remarkable historic and modern libraries, along with inspiring programs that empower readers and communities alike.

- [Joe] Libraries across Georgia are very important to Georgians.

Looking around the state, you have beautiful historic libraries.

There were 29 Carnegie libraries in Georgia.

- And as of today, 24 of them remain standing and 10 of those still operate as public libraries.

Just this year, one of them received a state grant to do some renovations, so they really are very well cared for and very well used here in Georgia.

The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech and Fort Valley State University all have Carnegie library buildings as part of their campus infrastructure, and they've been very sensitively restored and are still used.

- I love Carnegie libraries, they're so beautiful, but not a lot of people know about Carnegie libraries and how important it was to have this idea.

Carnegie was from Scotland where reading, very important.

A lot of English libraries were private libraries.

You had to be a member, you had to pay, and he really believed in having free, open access to books so that everyone had a chance.

- So from the late 1800s, the early 1900s, you had this surge of Georgians loving libraries and petitioning to have a Carnegie library in their community.

And I think what you see from that strong foundation is this wealth of loving of literature, of authors, of people really celebrating the accomplishments of the literary heritage of their state.

- And you have communities that are still coming together to build new libraries, to build more library branches to serve the growing population of Georgia.

- We are so fortunate here in Georgia to have 408 public libraries that are each unique and reflective of their communities.

We're one of the only states to offer a statewide library card for all residents free of charge for both patrons and more than 300 participating libraries.

That's our PINES network, and that PINES card gives patrons access to library collections around the state that are delivered by courier to each system.

So wherever you go in Georgia, we can put a book in your hands.

Even if your local library is tiny, you have access to over 11 million items.

And our book lovers in Georgia love our PINES system.

- Beyond its wonderful libraries, Georgia's indie bookstores help stories bloom too, creating places where neighbors come together, and the next great book is always waiting.

- [Joe] We are very proud of Katie Mitchell.

Not only is she a Georgian, but her book "Prose to the People" was written in one of our branch libraries.

It is a love letter to Black-owned independent bookstores across the country.

We are very fortunate in Georgia and in the Atlanta area to have several featured in this book.

But how culturally significant these are, not only to members of the Black community, but to Georgians at large.

- It focuses on Black bookstores from the 1830s all the way to present day.

I wrote this because I've seen how transformative Black bookstores have been for me as a customer and as a book seller, and I found them to be as transformative as the Black church, as Black colleges, but found that they had been understudied.

And I thought it was deeply ironic that the story of Black bookstores hadn't been told in book form, because they hold our histories and no one had told their histories yet.

Being from Georgia, I have the immense privilege of being surrounded by Black bookstores, especially here in Atlanta.

So the Shrine of the Black Madonna being an example, which started in 1975, and then bookstores that have started more recently, like For Keeps Bookstore, which is on Auburn Avenue, which is just steps away from Martin Luther King Jr's childhood home.

Yes, they're selling books, but they also become these defacto community centers.

But in the same vein, they all have the shared mission of liberation through literacy, and so that was really an exciting through line to explore in "Prose to the People."

- The community of independent bookstores in Atlanta is huge and vibrant, and many book clubs meet at them.

A Cappella Books is known for bringing huge authors to us, including Jesmyn Ward.

I remember they asked me to do an interview with her.

Kaveh Akbar came here through A Cappella Books.

Charis Books is always bringing really exciting people and making a kind of a space where you can interact with them right there in the store.

There's a lot happening here as it relates to books and bookstores, and a lot of that you can see happen through the Decatur Book Festival.

And all of the bookstores are always there selling the authors' books, the authors who come to the Decatur Book Festival, and we're looking forward to a Decatur Book Festival.

They're definitely a huge part of the community in Atlanta.

- Oh, I could mention just a smattering of wonderful bookstores.

We don't have the time.

I'd be reading a list that went on and on and on, like reading a phone book.

One of my favorites is The Story Shop in Monroe, Georgia.

It has a wardrobe right out of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" that you can walk through into another room filled with books.

The Book Worm Bookstore in Powder Springs is a wonderful example of a community-based bookstore, an independent bookstore that really reaches out in every way to the community, with overnight parties for, you know, spend the night and read a book, community programs in the park.

So I love that bookstore very much.

And Little Shop of Stories in my hometown of Decatur, Georgia is a children's bookstore that serves children and adults and children at heart, and it's just a wonderful, welcoming, friendly place.

- [Joe] Charis Books & More is one of the nation's oldest independent feminist bookstores and just celebrated 50 years in business.

Our independent bookstores are vital and they have served the community for so long, and I think the reason they're able to do that is because our readers want them to survive.

- Well, a road trip would not be complete without a few pit stops to explore landmarks.

If you've ever wanted to step into the pages of a book or find the spark to write your own, Georgia is full of places that stir the soul.

- From the Southern Literary Trail to the atmospheric streets of Savannah made famous in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," these literary landmarks don't just honor great stories; they continue to inspire writers and book lovers today.

- For visitors to the state of Georgia, for book lovers, the Southern Literary Trail is a program that celebrates Southern writers in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.

In Georgia, there are 10 cities that are on the Southern Literary Trail, featuring nine Georgia writers.

Flannery O'Connor is featured on the Southern Literary Trail twice, both for Andalusia in Milledgeville, which is the farm where she did most of her writing, and of course the childhood home that she was born in and grew up in in Savannah, Georgia.

- [Julie] I would encourage anyone who is interested in the Southern Literary Trail to visit Andalusia, which is Flannery O'Connor's home in Milledgeville, Georgia.

It's a great place to visit.

Now it's a part of Georgia College and State University.

It's open for tours, and this year they're going to be holding events to celebrate her 100th birthday.

It is well worth a visit.

- [Joe] But it also features places that are significant to Erskine Caldwell, who wrote "Tobacco Road" in Moreland, Georgia, and the Carson McCullers home in Columbus, as well as Caroline Miller's home in Baxley, Georgia, as well as the Wren's Nest, the home of Joel Chandler Harris, who was born in Edenton, but who lived here in Atlanta and is famous for the "Uncle Remus" stories.

- You can visit Alice Walker's home too, and if you're really wanting to go a little bit off the beaten path and go down in my neck of the woods, which is in Southwest Georgia, there's this little town called Plains, and you can visit Jimmy Carter's home.

And I will point out that he was a Georgia writer and he's in the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

And so that's really worth seeing if you're off the beaten path.

- [Katie] If you find yourself in Atlanta, I definitely recommend visiting Martin Luther King Jr's childhood home, which is located on Auburn Avenue.

It looks the same way it did when he was living there as a child.

And of course, Martin Luther King has written so many important books and speeches.

So I think being there is a great way to see where it all started, how he was raised, and then being in the neighborhood that he was in when his formative years were taking place.

- As a Georgia writer, it feels wonderful to be even a small part of this fellowship of extraordinary writers, people that started their writing life in this state and were inspired.

They were inspired by the topography, they were inspired by the fables and folklore and myths of this area.

They were inspired.

Georgia is such an extraordinary place, from its Blue Ridge Mountains to its coastal areas down into Deep South Georgia where we have our live oaks and you can visit old cemeteries, and that, by the way, is a great place to get names for your characters.

- I love Oakland Cemetery.

It's where Margaret Mitchell is buried, but you have to know Margaret Mitchell's married name to find her at Oakland.

But it's such a beautiful cemetery, and it's one of the only, if not the only cemeteries where Confederate and Union soldiers are buried side by side.

And I love finding little details like that, and they're all around Atlanta.

You know, all you have to do is do a little digging.

- At the heart of Georgia's literary riches is the Georgia Center for the Book, working tirelessly to keep the love of reading alive and thriving.

From hosting author talks and libraries to curating remarkable collections from around the world, the Center is always dreaming up new ways to inspire readers and writers alike.

- Centers for the Book are charged with three specific missions from the Center for the Book and the Library of Congress, and that is to support libraries and lifelong learning, to promote literacy and the literary arts, and to preserve the literary heritage of our states and territories.

So it is our job here at the Georgia Center for the Book to do just that.

And we support libraries by placing author events in their buildings, in their facilities.

On preserving the literary heritage of our state side of our mission, we sponsor several awards, including the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the Lillian E Smith Book Award, and we produce annually a list of books all Georgians should read that are written by Georgians or about Georgians that we feel are culturally significant to those living in our state.

One of the programs that we conduct locally here with the Decatur Arts Alliance is called The Book as Art exhibition, and it focused on book arts, handmade books, letterpress books, sometimes even reclaimed library books that were turned into pieces of art, and it has evolved into an international juried art show.

We have had books from Italy, Israel, Japan on display at the Decatur Library that became a host after the third installation.

That particular exhibition.

Interesting that, you know, so many of our patrons know what the Center for the Book does at the library.

And you know, our speaker series has been going on for many, many years now, and it has featured local authors, Georgia authors, bestselling authors from around the country.

International bestselling authors have been here, and many of our patrons view our speaker series as kind of like a movie theater, that they know that two to three nights a week there's a good show going on at the Decatur Library.

- Georgia has incredible resources and programs that bring communities together through books and stories.

If you'd like to explore the Georgia Center for the Book's events, book lists, and author programs, visit georgiacenterforthebook.org.

And if our reading road trip has sparked your curiosity about the places, 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 an incredible journey we've had through Georgia.

Thank you again to the Library of Congress and Georgia Center for the Book for partnering with PBS Books on "America's Story: A Reading Road Trip."

- I would love to go see the peacocks on the Andalusia Farm.

What about you?

- Oh, I want to check out those independent bookstores in Atlanta.

- What about you?

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

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

- [Fred] And if you're looking for more literary inspiration, be sure to visit your local library 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.

- 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 trip to Georgia.

- Until next time, happy reading!

- Happy reading!

(bright music) (bright music continues) (music fades) (calm music)