Programs

Hill Country Birds and Waters is a collaborative collection of art and poetry that celebrates the beauty of the birds that make their home between Austin and San Antonio. Jim Blackburn’s heartfelt poems praising cedar waxwing, tufted titmouse, red-tailed hawk, green heron, golden-cheeked warbler, hepatic tanager, and other species—32 birds in all—are superbly paired with Isabelle Scurry Chapman’s tenderly rendered bird paintings. A paean to the peace of the Hill Country and the grace of its wildlife, this book also warns readers and calls out modern threats to spring-fed waterways and the birds that depend on them.

Blackburn is known for his accomplishments as an environmental lawyer and visionary. Through these poems, readers have the opportunity to glimpse the brilliant inner life of the man who has devoted himself to protecting the water, land, wildlife, and people of Texas. What we see is passionate reverence for avian life; Isabelle Scurry Chapman’s charming paintings express this reverence, too. Both the poems and paintings tell the truth like it is—without frills, but with a simple elegance and pure-hearted love rarely found in today’s books and media.

At the Hill Country Birds and Waters book launch, Blackburn will read several of his poems, and Chapman will show her paintings via PowerPoint and share a bit about her artistic process. The joint reading and art talk will be followed by a Q&A.