This week we visit with Naomi Shihab Nye in San Antonio, Texas.

Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity.

Naomi is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry, four novels, and an essay and short story collection.

Learn more about Naomi at the American Academy of Poets.

Naomi's Books on the Bed:

Garden Time by M.S. Merwin

Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford

An Ordinary Woman by Lucille Clifton

Does the Land Remember Me? A Memoir of Palestine by Aziz Shihab

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha

The Year I Stopped to Notice by Miranda Keeling

Matt's Gifts for Naomi:

The Listening Skin by Glenis Redmond

George Masa: A Life Reimagined by Janet McCue and Paul Bonesteel

Ways of Being Home by Cecilia Sotelo Cornejo (film)

Elizabeth Crook is the author of six novels: The Raven’s Bride and Promised Lands, The Night Journal, Monday, Monday, The Which Way Tree, and The Madstone. In 2023 Elizabeth received the prestigious Texas Writer Award from the Texas Book Festival and in 2025 the Texas Medal of Arts in Literary Arts and the Texas Institute of Letters' prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elizabeth lived in Nacogdoches, Texas and then San Marcos, Texas with her parents and brother and sister until age seven when the family moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) for Lyndon Johnson. Two years later her father was appointed Ambassador to Australia and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating from San Marcos High School. She attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982.

Elizabeth's Books on the Bed:

Silver Pennies (and More Silver Pennies) by Blanche Jennings Thompson

Precious Bane by Mary Webb

A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

True Grit by Charles Portis

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Now You Hear My Horn: The Journal of James Wilson Nichols, 1820-1887 by James Wilson Nichols

Matt's Gifts for Elizabeth:

The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

Gorilla by Lee Stockdale

Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden

This week we visit with Henry Wise in Staunton, Virginia.

Henry is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA program. A writer across multiple genres, his poetry has been published in Shenandoah, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, Nixes Mate Review, and elsewhere. His nonfiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures. "Holy City" is his first novel.

For more on Henry: henrywise.com

Henry's Books on the Bed:

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Joe by Larry Brown

Matt's Gifts for Henry:

Shutter and Exposure by Ramona Emerson

Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye