Gracie is a serious, sensitive, aspiring writer; Jannie, her autistic younger sister, is passionate about birds. As children, they were taken by their mother on a senseless trip through Europe that ended in their mother’s suicide. Now, in Berkeley, their father works tirelessly to find ways to engage Jannie, while Gracie—unwilling to reveal the truth about her mother’s suicide or her sister’s autism to anyone outside her family—weaves a web of lies around herself that isolate her even as Jannie, in part through her relationships with and understanding of birds, begins to speak, interact, and emerge.

Narrated by Gracie and alternating back and forth between 2002, when the sisters are still children/adolescents, and 2017, when they are in their early adulthood, The Language of Birds is a story of coming to understand what seems unfamiliar and indecipherable, and of finding authentic ways to be with the people you love.

Among Anita Barrows’ awards in poetry have been grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, The Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, The Quarterly Review of Literature, and The Riverstone Press. She’s published three poetry chapbooks with Quelquefois Press and the Kelsay Press recently published three volumes of her poetry. She has also appeared in radio programs on NPR and the BBC. Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Barrows has lived in the Bay Area since 1966 (except for three years in London) and is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Berkeley, where she specializes in the treatment of children with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. Barrows is also a tenured professor of psychology at the Wright Institute, Berkeley, and is a mother, a grandmother, and companion to a menagerie of dogs, cats and birds.