Delia Owens

Delia Owens (born ca. 1949)[1] is an American author and zoologist. Her debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 for 25 non-consecutive weeks.[2] The book has been on New York Times Bestsellers lists for more than a year.[3] She has also written the memoirs Cry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant,[4][5] and Secrets of the Savanna,[6] with her then-husband, Mark, about their time studying animals in Africa.[7]

Biography

Owens grew up in rural Georgia in the 1950s.[8][9] She and her then-husband, Mark Owens, were students in biology at the University of Georgia. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis.[10] In their early 20's, working on a shoestring, they self funded a research expedition in Deception Valley in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana in 1974. The area had had virtually no outside human contact, and many of the area's predators had little fear of people. The Owens initially concentrated their research on the social lives of brown hyenas. The work caught the attention of the scientific community, and they soon were funded by the National Geographic Society, the Frankfurt Zoological Society and others, afterwhich they expanded their work into studying lions and promoting conservation. Their popular book, Cry of the Kalahari, published in 1984, was a New York Times #1 bestseller. Since completing her PhD in Biology Delia has published her studies of African wildlife behavioral ecology in professional journals, including Nature, the Journal of Mammalogy, Animal Behaviour, and the African Journal of Ecology. She has also contributed articles to Natural History and International Wildlife aimed at a wider audience.

The Owens were expelled from Botswana after mobilizing an international campaign to stop the fencing of wildebeest by cattle ranchers, and so moved their research to the North Luangwa National Park, and later to Mpika, Zambia, in the early 1990s.[1] Although the areas had a reputation as relatively pristine wilderness, they found elephant poaching to be rampant. Understanding the economic necessity of local, subsistence-based hunting, the Owens worked to establish alternative sources of income for local villagers, including grinding mills, fishponds, and sunflower-oil presses. [11]

While in Zambia the Owens took an aggressive stance against poaching. In 1996, ABC aired a report entitled "Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story." The report featured the killing of a poacher by a team of anti-poaching government "scouts" who worked with the Owens. Delia's stepson was later implicated in the killing.[1] The Owens denied the accusation.[12]

Delia continues to write. Her 2018 novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, about a young girl who raises herself in the swamps of North Carolina, is an international bestseller.

Delia and Mark Owens are divorced.[1] Delia Owens lives on a large ranch in Boundary County, Idaho[9] where she works on local conservation issues.

Owens is the co-founder of the Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation in Stone Mountain, GA. She has also worked as a roving editor for International Wildlife, lectured throughout North America, and participated in conservation efforts for the grizzly bear throughout the United States.[13]

Awards/Honors

See also

References
  1. Goldberg, Jeffrey (March 29, 2010). "The Hunted". The New Yorker.
  2. "Combined Print & E-Book Fiction, Bestsellers". The New York Times. 2019.
  3. "Crawdads: 1 year on the NYT Bestsellers List". Delia Owens. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
  4. "Review of The Eye of the Elephant". Publishers Weekly. 28 September 1992.
  5. "Review of The Eye of the Elephant". Kirkus Reviews. 1992.
  6. "Review of Secrets of the Savanna". Publishers Weeekly. 20 March 2006.
  7. "Delia Owens, Who Suffused Her African Memoirs With Lush Natural Detail, Turns to Fiction". The New York Times. 2018.
  8. "With 'Where the Crawdads Sing,' a Debut Novel Goes Big". Wall Street Journal. 2018.
  9. Cary, Alice (August 2018). "Delia Owens | A natural way of storytelling". BookPage. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  10. "Delia Owens". Delia Owens. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
  11. Gorner, Peter. "HOW A COUPLE OF ZOOLOGISTS FROM GEORGIA HAVE TAKEN ON AN ARMY OF WILDLIFE POACHERS IN ZAMBIA AND ARE WINNING-NOT WITH WEAPONS, BUT WITH JOBS". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2020-08-01.
  12. Goldberg, Jeffrey. "The Hunted". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-08-01.
  13. "Owens, Delia 1949(?)-". Encyclopedia.com. 27 August 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  14. "About the Awards". www.johnburroughsassociation.org. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
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