Over at Lit Hub, Michele Filgate reports on the growing influence of Street Lit, which provides writing workshops and books to the homeless community in Austin, Texas. Filgate also talks with Street Lit founder Barry Maxwell, as he opens up about the “relief” reading offered him while he was homeless:
Reading was such a zone of psychological relief, and also somehow of connection, that I honestly don’t know how I would have stayed as sane as I did without it. Sometimes to read was purely to pass the time; sometimes it helped me to realize that I’d had a life before homelessness, and helped maintain continuity with it, an awareness that where I was at the moment did not wholly define me.
