Short Synopsis
Tracing acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar's movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life.

Full Synopsis
"Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into myself."

So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape—and in the cosmos—by way of watching birds.

Tracing her movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life. Kumar's perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting and cataloguing species. For Kumar, birds "become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world." At a time when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar's reflections on these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that "seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us."

"Kumar wows in this sparkling exploration of her relationship with the birds that serve as her 'almanac' and help her tune 'in to the seasons' and to herself. . . . Kumar's reflections are rendered in elegant prose and are rich with vivid descriptions." ---Publishers Weekly

"The essays in Conversations With Birds are rendered in finely wrought prose, steeped in memory and thrumming with endless curiosity about nature." ---BookPage Starred Review

"An eloquent depiction of how birding engenders a deep love of our ecosystems and a more profound understanding of ourselves." ---Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

"In the luminous essays of Priyanka Kumar's Conversations with Birds, birds are a portal to reclaiming childhood connections with nature and the lush, wild landscape of northern India's remote mountains." ---Foreword Reviews

"This book felt like meditation to me. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator's voice is so soothing, plus the topic of discussion is approached with such gentleness that I actually used this to calm myself when I felt overwhelmed by real life." ---Procaffeinate with Books

"Filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar narrates her essay collection in a gentle voice." ---AudioFile