Lydia Torrez has spent nearly five decades shaping young minds in Oak Cliff. Her story spans generations of faith, education, and community—as a former St. Cecilia Catholic School student who returned to lead the school as principal, twice. She reflects on her career as an educator at both Bishop Dunne and St. Cecilia, sharing how each helped nurture confidence and curiosity in students who might have otherwise been overlooked. From guiding the future of St. Cecilia through its Blue Ribbon Initiative to serving on the advisory council for the new Halperin Park, Lydia continues to help shape Oak Cliff’s future—guiding the same neighborhood that shaped her.

Claudia Vega is a lifelong educator turned community builder, bookstore owner, and literary advocate. In this episode, she shares how growing up in Oak Cliff with educator parents instilled a love of books—and how that love became action. Claudia and her husband John co-founded Whose Books, a neighborhood bookstore committed to access, representation, and joy, and ARCO, a nonprofit that builds reading culture through book gifting, programming, and removing barriers to reading. We talk about the obstacles she faced launching a bookstore in a “book desert,” the community’s response, and why cultivating a culture of reading is about equity, not just literacy. Along the way, Claudia reflects on browsing as a lost art, the power of story time, and what it really takes to start something from scratch in the place you call home.

Greg Brownderville is a poet, musician, professor of English at SMU, and editor of the Southwest Review. He joins us to talk about growing up in Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, discovering community in Oak Cliff, and the deep influence of Southern folklore on his work. We dig into Firebones, his multimedia storytelling project, and Frontera Fest, a free literary and arts festival in Bishop Arts that blends voices from the U.S. and Latin America. Along the way, we talk ghosts, shade tree storytellers, and why literature should never be boring.