Best Effort to Inject Culture into Houston

Houston's Writers in the Schools project is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and it deserves all the plaudits that come with lasting that long. It started with four writers getting "residencies" in Houston public schools, where they did all they could to encourage kids to enjoy reading and writing. It's become an organization with a $1.2 million budget and 55 writers sharing 200 residencies reaching more than 12,500 kids, in schools, in hospital wards and in juvenile-probation programs. A highlight comes each spring, when elementary and middle-school kids gather at Rice University to read their poems or short stories and share what no doubt will become a lifelong passion for the written word.