About the books:

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, author Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world. In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater—an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.

Order a signed copy of The Backyard Bird Chronicles here.

Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves

In gorgeous and timely pieces, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a lush journey into wildness and Black being. Lanham notices nature through seasonal shifts, societal unrest, and deeply personal reflection and traces a path from bitter history to the present predicament. Drawing canny connections between the precarity of nature and the long arm of racism, the collection offers reconciliation and eco-reparation as hopeful destinations from our current climate of division. In Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves, Lanham mines the deep connection to ancestors through the living world and tunes his unique voice toward embracing the radical act of joy.

Order Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves here.

About the authors:

Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, which became a surprise bestseller, spending more than forty weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List. Her other novels are The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement, all New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins: Memory and Imagination, as well as two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Amy served as co-producer and co-screenwriter with Ron Bass for the film adaptation of "The Joy Luck Club," for which they received WGA and BAFTA nominations. Her essays and stories are found in hundreds of anthologies and textbooks, and have been assigned as required reading in many high schools and universities. Her class on writing, memory and imagination can be found on MasterClass. Amy Tan was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International Orange Prize. She is the recipient of many honors, including the Commonwealth Gold Award, the Carl Sandburg Award. In 2022, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023, President Biden presented her with the National Humanities Medal. The National Endowment for the Arts chose The Joy Luck Club for its inaugural Big Read program in 2007. In 2016, Amy began taking nature journaling classes with John Muir Laws. During the pandemic shutdown, she spent long hours observing the behavior of wild birds in her backyard. Her editor, Dan Halpern, suggested she turn those pencil sketches, colored portraits, and journal notes into an illustrated book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, published in April 2024 by Knopf. Amy serves on the board of American Bird Conservancy, the National Poetry Series, and The Community of Writers. She lives with her husband and their dog in California and New York.

J. Drew Lanham, PhD, is a creator; a poet, a writer, a curator and a libbretist. He is a naturalist/bird-adorer/hunter/conservationist/farmer who blends wild ecology into the social context of human being, past present and future. Drew is also a Certified Wildlife Biologist and a Distinguished Alumni Professor of cultural and conservation ornithology at Clemson University. He is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, SC and the author of Sparrow Envy—Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts (Hub City, 2021) and the award-winning, The Home Place—Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Editions, 2016). Drew's academic and artist work centers on ethnic perspectives of wildness and conservation. Drew's creative work and opinion appears abundantly online and in print in venues such as Orion, Emergence, Vanity Fair, Oxford American, High Country News, Bitter Southerner, Cutthroat, Terrain, Places Journal, Literary Hub, Newsweek, Slate, NPR, Story Corps, Audubon, Sierra Magazine, Mud Review, The New York Times, American Bird Conservancy, Leopold Outlook, Flycatcher Journal, Patagonia "This is Love," "Threshold," and "On Being" podcasts. His online presence on YouTube as well as social media is extensive. Drew has been featured in Garden and Gun Magazine and Clemson World. He teaches writing workshops in creative non-fiction for Bread Loaf Environmental Writer's Conference, Northwoods Writer's Conference, Elk River Writer's Conference, and Orion. He is an editor for Cutthroat Journal, a contributing editor for Orion Magazine and on the editorial board of Terrain Magazine. He is Co-Director of the online workshop "Writing the Wild," and his work is reposited in the Sowell Family Archives at Texas Tech University. Drew is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow living on a 46-acre farm in the Dark Corner of South Carolina, where he claims a mission of "Cultivating words and wildness.” His most recent work, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves (Hub City, 2024), is a lyrical treatment on deep ornithology, redefining wildness, and pushing "good trouble" past narrowed minds while celebrating his intensely southern rural Blackness. Drew's favorite birds are the wild ones with feathers.