
In the 1500s, the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed the eastern coastline of the United States and claimed the area in the vicinity of present-day North Carolina for France. She currently lives in Idaho.Īs explained in the novel itself, Where the Crawdads Sing takes place in the marshlands of North Carolina, which have an interesting history in terms of settlement and habitation. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first work of fiction. Over the years, Owens has published her writing about wildlife in a number of scientific journals and has won awards for her research and conservation efforts.

After living in Botswana, Owens and her husband moved to Zambia, where they studied elephants and founded a social work program that helped locals survive economically without having to become animal poachers. For seven years, they lived in an extremely remote area and studied packs of lions and hyenas, eventually co-writing Cry of the Kalahari, which was a bestseller.

After this, Owens and her then-husband moved to Africa, where they worked as wildlife scientists in Botswana. However, when she went to college at the University of Georgia, she studied zoology instead of English, eventually going on to complete a doctorate in Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis. During this time, Owens developed an early passion for writing, even winning a writing contest in the sixth grade and deciding that she would someday be a professional writer. As a child, she rode horses and explored the woods, encouraged by her mother to spend time in the wilderness.

Born in 1949, Delia Owens grew up in Georgia, where she developed a strong love of nature. You can also connect with Delia on Facebook at. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel. She currently lives in Idaho, where she continues her support for the people and wildlife of Zambia. She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and International Wildlife, among many others. Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa- Cry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant, and Secrets of the Savanna.

