Open Road

Writer Sam Stephenson was already living in Texas in his head before migrating from his home in coastal North Carolina. He and his family were looking for a house in College Station when their realtor told him about a place that sounded familiar: Matagorda. “It was her family’s favorite spot on the coast. They liked it because it was isolated and remote, with basically no tourism except people there to fish or watch birds. This sounded good to me.”Narration: Sam StephensonProducer: Katey PsencikIllustration: Sam Ward

Writer Elizabeth Gonzalez James explores her family’s history as crypto-Jews, Catholic converts who continued to practice Jewish rituals in secret during the Inquisition. “I felt I was closing a wound that had opened 500 years earlier, finishing a story that had remained incomplete.”Narration: Elizabeth Gonzalez JamesProducer: Katey PsencikIllustration: Daniel Bejar

While coping with a loss, writer Emily Gogolak returns to the Panhandle to repay a stranger who helped her while stranded on the side of the road. 

“That memory is a stand-in for everything I miss about Texas—the openness of its plains, the enormity of its sky, the quiet kindness of its strangers. I decide to move back.”Narration: Emily GogolakProducer: Katey PsencikIllustration: Jessica Fontenot