{"title":"Priyanka Kumar","description":"Priyanka Kumar is the author of Conversations with Birds, widely acclaimed as \"a landmark book\" that \"could help people around the world rewild their hearts and souls\" (Psychology Today). Kumar's essays appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion,  and Sierra magazine. She has been featured on CBS News Radio, Yale Climate Connections, and Oprah Daily, and her awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, an ICJS Fellowship, a New Mexico\/New Visions Governor's Award, an Aldo Leopold residency, a Canada Council for the Arts Grant, and an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Fellowship. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She wrote, directed, and produced the feature documentary The Song of the Little Road, starring Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar, which premiered at Telluride and is in the permanent collection of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Kumar taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California, and serves on the Advisory Council of the Leopold Writing Program. She completed a Climate Master certification in 2025.","products":[{"product_id":"the-light-between-apple-trees-rediscovering-the-wild-through-a-beloved-american-fruit-hardcover","title":"The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFeatured on NPR's Living on Earth\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eForeword Reviews'\u003c\/i\u003e Book of the Day\u003cbr\u003eFood Tank's Fall Reading Recommendation\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"A deeply meditative book in the vein of Robin Wall Kimmerer's\u003ci\u003e Braiding Sweetgrass.\u003c\/i\u003e\"\u003cbr\u003e--Sy Montgomery, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Soul of an Octopus\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit--especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree--and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In \u003ci\u003eThe Light Between Apple Trees\u003c\/i\u003e, Kumar takes us on a dazzling and transformative journey to rediscover apples, unearthing a rich and complex history while illuminating how we can reimagine our relationship with nature. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eApples are popular, but in our everyday lives we rarely encounter more than a handful of varieties: of the sixteen thousand apple varieties once celebrated in America, scarcely a fifth remain accessible. Kumar reveals the richness of a hidden world, bringing readers to the vibrant forests and orchards where historic trees still survive. These mature and wild orchards offer more than just fruit: they are havens for creatures from hummingbirds to bears and a living connection to generations past. She brilliantly weaves together science and childhood memories with the apple's storied history, from its roots in Kazakhstan to Spanish orchards in the Southwest and Thomas Jefferson's beloved Monticello fruitery. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Light Between Apple Trees \u003c\/i\u003eis a lyric odyssey that will forever change how you look at an \"apple a day.\" Kumar shows how--if we follow untamed paths--the tang and texture of an apple can lead us back to the wild.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376882843871,"sku":"9781642833638","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/m5rYgEfz3X9781642833638.webp?v=1789228855"},{"product_id":"conversations-with-birds-paperback","title":"Conversations with Birds - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"How grateful I am for the chance to join this generous author's lyrical, intimate, and revelatory conversations with birds!\" --Sy Montgomery, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Soul of an Octopus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into myself.\"\u003c\/b\u003eSo begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape--and in the cosmos--by way of watching birds.Tracing her movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life. Kumar's perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting and cataloguing species. Rather, from the mango-colored western tanager that rescues her from a bout of altitude sickness in Sequoia National Park to ancient sandhill cranes in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and from the snowy plovers building shallow nests with bits of shell and grass to the white-breasted nuthatch that regularly visits the apricot tree behind her family's casita in Santa Fe, for Kumar, birds \"become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.\"At a time when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar's reflections on these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that \"seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.\"","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376919838943,"sku":"9781639550807","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/eiShFx84Ud9781639550807.webp?v=1789228957"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/priyanka-kumar.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}