A local author is highlighting the Rio Grande Valley.

Oscar Casares is a proud Valley native, author, and storyteller, and he's writing about what the Valley is like and life along the border.

"Very rooted in the Valley, those were my growing up years, formative years. What really kind of gave me my sense of identity," Casares said.

Casares grew up in Brownsville and is now a creative writing professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

"I was hearing a lot of other people's stories from other parts of the country and I was never hearing our story," Casares said.

Casares is changing that by writing about the Valley.

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Some of his published work includes a collection of stories called "Brownsville: Stories," "Amigoland," and "Where We Come From."

His inspiration came from his own family.

"I had grown up in house with no books, essentially, so the stories that I had heard and how I learned to tell a story was from hearing my tios come to the house and tell stories," Casares said.

Casares has also spent the past two decades writing for Texas Monthly.

"My focus in those essays that I write for Texas Monthly is very specific to the Valley, to Brownsville and to the border," Casares said.

He created a project called "Pictures From The Border," which covers Brownsville to El Paso.

"Along the way, the idea was that I was going to write these postcards to my daughter," Casares said.

He's also partnered with musician Carrie Rodriguez to create a special show with music. The goal is to give a realistic feel to the stories of border towns.

"All of the postcards became one essay in the magazine," Casares said. "Basically, it was going to be my postcards and her music that was going to be written about the border."

For Casares, sharing our culture with the rest of the world is more than a job.

"We may speak two languages, we may eat certain foods that you won't find in certain parts of the country, but at the end of the day, family is family," Casares said.

And Casares says family is one of the pillars of people in the Valley. He hopes to continue telling stories from the RGV for years to come.

Oscar Casares is Made in the 956.

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