5 Fun Facts to Chirp About: Featuring Amy Tan, Author of The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Pausing to look into your yard and discovering your feeder alive with Crimson-headed Woodpeckers, sparrows, goldfinches, and juncos can spark pleasure, connection, and a deeper sense of function. Taking the time to really pause, discover behaviors, and contemplate the unfolding nature story in your individual yard is what many birders do, together with acclaimed writer and nature journaler Amy Tan. In her newest guide, The Yard Hen Chronicles, she shares this similar sense of pleasure.We invite you to affix us in attending to know the birder behind the phrases with the 5 enjoyable details beneath. 

1. Born within the U.S. in 1952 to immigrant mother and father from China, Amy Tan grew up within the San Francisco Bay Space.  She attended 5 schools: Linfield Faculty, San Jose Metropolis Faculty, San Jose State College, College of California at Santa Cruz, and College of California at Berkeley.  She acquired her B.A. with a double main in English and Linguistics, adopted by her M.A. in Linguistics (amytan.web).
2. Amy additionally wrote the libretto for the opera The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which had its world premiere with the San Francisco Opera in September 2008. Since 1993, she has served as lead rhythm dominatrix, backup singer, and second tambourine with the literary storage band, the Rock Backside Remainders, whose members embrace Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Scott Turow (amytan.web).
3. Amy Tan was a finalist for the Nationwide E-book Award, the Nationwide E-book Critics Circle Award, and the Worldwide Orange Prize. She is the recipient of many honors, together with the Commonwealth Gold Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, the 2024  NYPL Library Lion.  She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2022, and in 2023, President Biden offered her with the Nationwide  Humanities Medal (amytan.web).
4. In 1987, Amy went to China for the primary time, accompanied by her mom. When she returned residence, she realized that she had acquired a number of affords primarily based on her submission of three quick tales. The ensuing guide of linked tales, The Pleasure Luck Membership, was hailed as a novel and have become a shock bestseller, spending over forty weeks on The New York Occasions Bestseller Listing.  (amytan.web)
5. In 2016, at 65 years outdated, Amy started taking nature journaling courses with John Muir Legal guidelines. Through the pandemic shutdown, she spent lengthy hours observing the habits of untamed birds in her yard. Her editor, Dan Halpern, steered she flip these pencil sketches, coloured portraits, and journal notes into an illustrated guide, The Yard Hen Chronicles, printed in April 2024 by Knopf, which turned an prompt #1 bestseller. (amytan.web).

 “To attract portraits of the birds. I needed to really feel the life inside and see what the chicken was seeing, feeling, and planning as its subsequent transfer. I imagined what it thought of me. I thought of survival.” – Amy Tan  

Amy Tan will be part of with John Muir Legal guidelines on stage on March 21 at Rowe Sanctuary’s new occasion, Braided In Unison. Legal guidelines and Tan’s dialog will discover nature journaling and the way it can join us to birds, nature, and the broader world.  Friends can be part of the occasion in individual or by livestream; registration is now dwell.

 Purchase tickets here.