In this collection of elegant and evocative essays, a novelist reflects on the beauty and significance of birds, those animals that “become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.”

—The New York Times

Priyanka Kumar’s outstanding and profoundly moving book Conversations with Birds … could help people around the world rewild their hearts and souls…. (A) landmark, most timely book.

—Psychology Today

Priyanka Kumar lovingly narrates how encounters with birds have molded her outlook on life, family, and nature, bridging the mountains of her childhood in India to her adult wanderings in California and New Mexico. A spark was Kumar’s chance “mango-colored bird” sighting—a Western Tanager—that stirs her to “aliveness” during a near-death experience; her powerful musings take off from there. Her writing is full of beauty but also tells of destruction of the interconnected ecosystems that sustain birds and people. “Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us,” she writes.

—Audubon

“This isn’t just a book about birds, it’s a look at the joy and curiosity we feel when we build connections with the natural world…. With gorgeously descriptive language, (Kumar) shares her fascinating discoveries about birds and uses them as a gateway to explore topics like climate change, racism, and spirituality. For anyone feeling lost in our increasingly complicated human world, Conversations With Birds is just the compass you need.”

—Apple, November Best Books of the Month

Novelist Kumar (Take Wing and Fly Here) 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: “At the brink of the water, turquoise with milky sprays, the birds pirouetted and scooted away from the vigorously choppy waves” . . . These outstanding reflections will inspire and enlighten, and are perfect for readers of Diane Ackerman.

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A delightful ode to birds and a powerful defense of the planet we share with them…. An eloquent depiction of how birding engenders a deep love of our ecosystems and a more profound understanding of ourselves.

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Just as immersion in nature inspires a mix of profound awe and renewed curiosity about this Earth we call home, so, too, does filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar’s mesmerizing essay collection, Conversations With Birds —rendered in finely wrought prose, steeped in memory and thrumming with endless curiosity.

—BookPage (starred review)

Christians need people like Kumar: prophets and poets who are at the periphery of our norms, stirring us from our apathetic slumber, pointing us back into conversation with creation . . . and inspiring us to consider the birds.

—The Christian Century

It is glorious to be in this world with Kumar. It will prompt you to get out and explore wherever you are living.

—Hippocampus Magazine

Conversations with Birds does something that few other bird books do: passionately writes about that moment when a person becomes a birder. . . [this book] reveals a bright new voice among the usual bird literature.

—Bird Observer

I appreciate the tenderness and honor with which Priyanka Kumar reflects on the importance of birds in her life. They mark seasons and stages, bear the wounds of climate change and still persevere with power and grace. 

—Ms. Magazine

(Kumar’s) essay collection reveals the wonders of the avian world and suggests that anyone willing to look upward—even in a bustling metropolis such as Los Angeles—can see nature unfolding in encounters that both anchor and stir the soul.

—Alta Journal

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

A bird the color of mangoes, a beachcomber with a crescent-moon bill, the owl who controls the dark side of nature: in unforgettable encounters with feathered neighbors like these, Priyanka Kumar charts the life-changing surprise and splendor that birds can bring. They open the heart. They widen the soul. For Kumar, a peripatetic filmmaker and often a stranger in a strange land, birds have revealed connection and created wholeness. How grateful I am for the chance to join this generous author’s lyrical, intimate, and revelatory conversations with birds!

—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus

“Birds have guided Priyanka Kumar through danger, loss, joy, and change. In her moving collection of elegant essays, Conversations with Birds, she recounts her close encounters with cranes and curlews, owls and tanagers, generously sharing their wisdom and her own.“

—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction    

“Priyanka Kumar is attuned to the animating power that links her—and you and me—to our fellow creatures. While she has a deep affinity for birds, especially cranes and eagles and owls, she communes as well with bobcat, coyote, fox, and their four-legged kin. It is a joy to travel with this versatile artist, often in the company of her husband and their two young daughters, as she roams the American Southwest in search of elusive and majestic wildlife.”

—Scott R. Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination  

“Priyanka Kumar’s graceful and unusual work reminds us, again, of everything we lose with each insult to the natural world. Conversations with Birds is a wonderful read!”

—Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever