Growing up in rural Georgia in the 1950s, Delia Owen was encouraged to explore nature, often venturing out to "where the crawdads sing." These childhood experiences encouraged Owens to pursue a career in zoology: she earned a Bachelor of Science in zoology for the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis.
Before her debut novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens published zoological research and memoirs about her remote work in Africa. Along with her husband, Mark Owens, she traveled through Botswana in the early 1970s to study lions and brown hyenas and through Zamibia to study elephants. She won the John Burroughs Award for Nature...
