Turning the page on 10 years of great Texas Standard book interviews

5. Johnny Garza Villa – ‘Canto Contigo’

Halfway through the list is our interview just last year with YA author Jonny Garza Villa about the novel “Canto Contigo.” Garza Villa grew up along the Gulf Coast and currently lives in San Antonio – where “Canto Contigo” takes place:

“I like to describe it as sort of half grief novel, half rivals-to-lovers of romance, all about the epic highs and lows of high school mariachi.

It deals with the main character named Rafie Alvarez, who is like the most Leo Sun to ever Leo Sun. Self-described “God’s gift to mariachi… As his senior year approaches, his parents drop the news that they are moving to San Antonio. He is not happy about this, mainly because he has to leave his first place nationally-recognized mariachi group for the constantly second place Mariachi Todos Colores and the fictional Selena Quintanilla-Perez Academy in San Antonio.”

Author Louis Sachar reads from his latest book, “The Magician of Tiger Castle,” at BookPeople in Austin on Aug. 13, 2025. Leila Saidane / Texas Standard

4. Louis Sachar – ‘The Magician of Tiger Castle’

Austin-based author Louis Sachar is probably best known for his books for kids: “Holes” and the “Wayside School” series. He told us this year that, in his 70s, he feels too old to write for kids. So he published his first adult novel – “The Magician of Tiger Castle”:

“One of the things that I liked about writing this is that I’m writing for the same people who grew up reading my books. And I hope that they’ll get the same feelings from that that they got from the ‘Wayside School’ books or ‘Holes.’”

3. Simran Jeet Singh – ‘Fauja Singh Keeps Going’

In 2020, Simran Jeet Singh told us that he was one of the only Sikh kids growing up in San Antonio. The birth of his own daughter inspired him to write a book representing families like his.

The story he decided to tell was “Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run a Marathon”:

“There’s this illustration in the book where Fauja Singh is braiding his daughter’s hair and when my daughter, she was three at the time, when she first saw that illustration, she squealed with delight and she said, ‘oh that’s you and me every morning.’ And that, to me, my heart just melted in that moment. To me, it was like that was the dream – that means the world to me.”

2. Jedediah Berry – ‘The Naming Song’

This is a conversation we had last year with author Jedediah Berry about the novel “The Naming Song.” It explores a world in which every border has fallen and all words have disappeared. A committee is tasked with making sense of the world again:

“I started to think a lot about words as borders. There are ways that we define things and then understand the world. But they can also set our thinking down sometimes.

And so a lot of what this book is about is actually the absence of words: what things are not named, what things are kind of beyond the reach of language. And those things deserve our attention as well, I think.

And sometimes a lack of a border is maybe more important than a border being present.”

1. Tim O’Brien – ‘Dad’s Maybe Book’

Our top book conversation from the past 10 years was with Central Texas author Tim O’Brien and his deeply personal book about fatherhood. “Dad’s Maybe Book” published in 2019. We talked with him about it then:

“I’ve always wished my dad had left for me what I am trying to leave for my kids in this book: some love letters, just to say, ‘I love you. I’m proud of you. I wish you well in your life…’ I didn’t receive that, and I want my own children to receive it through this book, if nothing else, to know they were adored by their father.”