Bird Bio

For a quarter century, more than a million readers and listeners—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title.

In the spring of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson had a decision to make. Just months after moving into the White House under the worst of circumstances - following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - he had to decide whether to run to win the presidency in his own right. He turned to his most reliable, trusted political strategist: His wife, Lady Bird Johnson.

Tracey Curtis-Taylor has created headlines around the world with three epic flights in a 1942 Boeing Stearman biplane. Paying homage to two historic female aviators, she flew from Cape Town to Goodwood in 2013, from London to Australia in 2015 and, two years later, completed a transcontinental flight across the USA, after surviving a plane crash during the expedition. But her daring exploits came at a huge personal cost. Tracey tells, in breathtaking detail, the remarkable story of how she overcame extreme adversity to complete her three epic journeys.

Bird by Bird is the bible of writing guides - a wry, honest, down-to-earth book that has never stopped selling since it was first published in the United States in the 1990s. Best-selling novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott distils what she's learned over years of trial and error. Beautifully written, wise and immensely helpful, this is the book for all serious writers and writers-to-be.

Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family's past; they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit - a duppy - into their home. Grandpa hasn't spoken a word since. Now Jewel is 12, and she lives in a house full of secrets and impenetrable silence. Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree.

Bird is determined and patient. So patient that she’s been hiding out behind a farmhouse for weeks waiting for Cecil. Bird misses her bedroom, her friends, and especially her mother. But more than that, she misses the feeling of family, and that means finding Cecil, the stepfather who abandoned them. But the longer Bird stays in Alabama, the less hidden she becomes. She’s discovered by Ethan, a boy whose heart problems have kept him sheltered from kids his own age.

It is 1964 and Maya Angelou is on her way back home, leaving behind her beloved - and now seriously teenage son Guy, to finish university in Ghana. America is pulsing with the challenge of change, the civil rights movement is in full swing and that's where Maya Angelou wants to be, working alongside her friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In this marvellous account, Maya Angelou provides, with her customary wisdom, compassion and wit, a first-hand record of an extraordinarily exciting and tragic political period.

Anyone who's read or listened to the classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings knows Maya Angelou was raised by her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. In Mom and Me and Mom, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away and unearths the well of emotions Angelou experienced long afterward as a result. While Angelou's first six autobiographies reveal about her out in the world, influencing and learning from statesmen and cultural icons, her final autobiography and conclusion to the series, Mom and Me and Mom, shares the intimate, emotional story about her own family.