Priyanka Kumar is the author of Conversations with Birds. Her essays and criticism appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Huffington Post, and High Country News. She is a recipient of the Aldo & Estella Leopold Writing Residency, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, a New Mexico/New Visions Governor’s Award, a Canada Council for the Arts Grant, an Ontario Arts Council Literary Award, and an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Fellowship. A graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kumar wrote, directed and produced the feature documentary The Song of the Little Road, starring Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar. Kumar has taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California, and serves on the Board of Directors at the Leopold Writing Program.

Preface

1. Mango-colored Bird

2. A Zen Monk at Work

3. The Rasa of Bulbuls

4. A Flicker of Light

5. The Fruit Orchard

6. Le Petit Nuthatch

7. Interlude: Western Tanager

8. The Bobcat in my Rosebed

9. The Mystery Dimension

10. Messengers from the Past

11. Damsels Floating in Air

12. Crepuscular Activities

13. Prairie Dog Town

14. Pedernal Mountain

15. La Jornada del Muerto

16. Lifting the Veil

17. Desert Breeding Grounds

18. Mi Casita

19. The Mountain Lion of Birds

20. Clifftop