Christina Treviño, born and raised in Defiance, remembers what it felt like to be a little girl at Defiance Public Library with the whole afternoon ahead of her.
“I would just be in here roaming around, looking for books, sitting outside, looking at this gorgeous view,” Treviño said. “I could have stayed here forever.”
She loved the Summer Reading Programs, and was always an avid reader, enjoying The Chronicles of Narnia, Half Magic, A Wrinkle in Time, Nancy Drew and The Three Investigators.
“Whatever I can find, whatever I can pick up, I’ll read it,” she said.
Treviño knew from age four that she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her mother owned a bridal shop, and Treviño had fun fashioning Barbie clothes from the available fabric remnants.
“I knew from a young age that I was going to go into fashion design,” she said. “So, I just kind of went through the steps to get there.”
After graduating from Ayersville High School she attended Bowling Green State University, where she studied fashion design. She then set sights on the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, submitted a portfolio, and was accepted.
“I was so ecstatic; I was in disbelief,” she said. “It was a really big deal.”
After a semester’s delay due to limited available housing for out-of-state students, she completed an intensive associate’s program at FIT and embarked on the career she’d always imagined.
For more than 30 years, Treviño worked in New York City fashion, eventually starting her own company and moving into consulting. Then she felt a call to something else. Something “soul-filling.”
Treviño began writing partly because she wanted to make something tangible about her mother, something she could read and share with friends and family. She initially launched three children’s stories (El Rancho Chocolaté, Where El Cucuy Lurks, and El Camino del Destino: A Migrant Family’s Adventure) in July 2025 and now has six books available. The stories, though fictional, draw from her parents’ experiences as Mexican-American migrant farm workers, her own childhood, her heritage, food, language, and family history. She illustrates them herself and includes historical information, bilingual glossaries, and spaces where children can make their own notes and drawings.
In a sense, Treviño has spent her life taking raw material and asking what else it might become: fabric into clothing, a family memory into a book, a book into a collection.
“The library has played a big role in that, for sure, keeping me engaged and creative,” she said.
Like many grown-up library kids, Treviño still happens to notice libraries wherever she goes. She particularly likes “Little Free Libraries.” She also credits her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Barnes, for fostering her love of writing.
“She was so encouraging, and she gave me so much confidence,” Treviño said.
Ultimately, fashion had her attention, but years later, through her work with Latin Biz Today, Treviño began interviewing Latino entrepreneurs, business owners, and career professionals and writing about their experiences, which helped shape the advice she has for young creatives in today’s rapidly changing world:
“The fact that you are creative, and you can write those stories, makes you a very unique, special individual,” she said. “Nobody has that story. Only you do. You’re the only person who can tell that.”
But creativity, she believes, should also be paired with practical skills. Young artists and writers need to know how to explain what they make, what they offer, and why it matters.
“If you cannot tell people what you do, you can’t participate in the conversation.”
She knows this from experience. Her career has kept her moving constantly between creative work and the business machinery behind it. Now, she is applying that experience to publishing, with plans that could eventually take her beyond books into animation and other products.
But the books themselves remain personal. They are about the people who came before her, and the importance of keeping those stories alive.
Treviño returned to Defiance recently by train, passing through Bryan on her way from the New York area, and arrived at Defiance Public Library with her mother. At the end of this interview, she headed to the shelves to browse some books. It was a small moment, but a bit of a full-circle one too: A girl walked into a library looking for books, and returned years later with incredible stories of her own.
Read more about Christina at christinatrevinoauthor.com.