Delia Owens, the co-author of three nonfiction books on African research and wildlife, published her debut novel, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” in 2018, the year when this interview took place. Since then this book has sold in the millions, attracted literary prizes, and has been made into a movie.
Where the Crawdads Sing is a mystery, a love story, and a courtroom drama, but it is primarily about self-reliance and survival. This nature-infused story features Kya, a young woman who was abandoned as a child in the remote coastal marshes of North Carolina and who learns to live by herself. In our conversation Delia also talks about her research life in Africa studying wildlife and how that experience affects her today.
"I learned from a book that crawdads don't really sing, but the important thing is that I learned from my mother that if you go deep enough into the wilderness, you'll hear them anyway." Delia Owens
