SHERMAN, TEXAS— Abell Library at Austin College is currently hosting an exhibit in celebration of 20 years of “Telling Our Stories.” Library hours are 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday; 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday; and 2  to 11 p.m. on Sunday.

The exhibit is free and open to the public and will remain on display until Feb. 12.

Austin College faculty Dr. Jerry Lincecum, emeritus professor of English, and Dr. Peggy Redshaw, professor of biology, began the TOS program for local writers of autobiography and family history in 1990.

The exhibit shows that in 1990 grants from Humanities Texas were matched by college funds to bring prominent authors like Elmer Kelton, Jane Roberts Wood, and A.C. Greene to inspire and teach local writers. As it developed over the ensuing two decades, TOS became a multi-faceted program and a self-supporting community institution.

A focal point of the exhibit is a beautiful friendship quilt, hanging in the Abell Library atrium, inscribed with the names of 72 local writers who have contributed at least two stories to the six TOS anthologies. Numerous additional books have been published by individual authors.

“The exhibit traces the changes in TOS as it spread out like a river flowing through a delta, leaving behind rich deposits of history in the form of hundreds of personal stories,” Lincecum said. Two separate exhibit cases document the varied spin-offs, such as the Legacy program of Home Hospice, a book of stories about battling cancer, Texas Folklore Society publications, and local history books written by Jack Frost McGraw, Judge R.C. Vaughan, and attorney Neilson Rogers, among others.

 “The number of writers over 80 years of age who were attracted to TOS required us to give them a separate category in the annual competition for prize-winning stories,” said Redshaw. “For them, attending the monthly classes or entering the annual contest became a goal that kept them healthy. One of them made it past 100. We have several now who are over 90.”

 Putting together a new TOS book has become an annual event, and Lincecum and Redshaw see the program continuing for at least another decade, as new class members keep enrolling. The exhibit offers insights into features of the program that have sustained local writers for two decades. 

A new series of monthly classes began in Whitesboro on Saturday, Jan. 23, while Sunday afternoon classes at Austin College started Jan. 24.  For more information, contact Dr. Jerry Lincecum at 903-893-6041 or by email at jlincecum@austincollege.edu