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Nicholas Drayson was born in England and has lived in Australia since 1982, where he studied zoology and a PhD in 19th century Australian natural history writing. He has worked as a journalist in the UK, Kenya and Australia, writing for publications such as the Daily Telegraph and Australian Geographic. From 1998 to 2001 he wrote for the National Museum of Australia. His first novel, Confessing a Murder, was published in 2002, his latest is A Guide to the Birds of East Africa (Penguin, 2008). He was recently the winner of the inaugural WILDCARE Tasmania Nature Writing Prize.
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Would you describe yourself as a birder?
I'd describe myself as more of a naturalist—I like nature as a
whole and in all its parts. I get just as much pleasure in watching a wasp
hunting for spiders, a family of baboons, or the colors of the New England fall
as I do in seeing a bird that I have never encountered before. The great thing
about birds, though, is that they are easy to see and study. There are lots of
them, they can be found nearly everywhere, most of them fly around happily in
the daylight, and they make such great noises.
What made you decide to write this book?
Ten years ago I finished my Ph.D. and married the world's most
beautiful Antarctic lexicographer, Bernadette Hince. Bernadette had just
accepted a job as publications editor in an international agroforestry research
center in Kenya, and we moved from Australia to Nairobi. I had done a lot of
nature writing in Australia but, having no job and no work permit in Kenya, I
decided to bite the literary bullet and write a novel. This situation also
allowed me to spend a lot of time looking at Kenya's spectacular
wildlife—including its birds. When we left Kenya a year and a half later, I took
with me a manuscript (...
Alice Greenway divides her time between the United States and Britain. Her first novel, White Ghost Girls, set in Hong Kong in the 1960s, won the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and was on the Orange Prize longlist.... (more)
If you enjoyed:
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa
Try:
The Bird Skinner
by Alice Greenway
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya (Africa) in 1940. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Wangari Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa
Try:
Unbowed
by Wangari Maathai
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