'The Backyard Bird Chronicles': Amy Tan and Professor Andrew Gosler in Conversation

The Backyard Bird Chronicles:

Amy Tan and Professor Andrew Gosler in Conversation

Jeniam Conversations

What does it mean for life-writers to look outward—to birds and the unruliness of the natural world?

How might birdwatching’s practices of observation and recording shape the writing of the self?

In her memoir, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024), Amy Tan turns to the birds outside her window as a way of bearing witness to the rhythms of the natural world, the passage of time, and the experience of grief. What began as a daily practice of observation and sketching gradually became a record of loss, love, and the unexpected consolations of attention. Tan considers what it means to truly see—and how that act of seeing might lead to a deeper understanding of the self.

In conversation with ornithologist Professor Andrew Gosler, Tan reflects on how birdwatching cultivates a form of attention that is both ethical and literary: what does it mean to write a life alongside other species? How might close observation reshape what memoir can notice, record, and say?

Touching on life-writing, nature writing, grief memoir, and the ethics of attention, this conversation explores how practices of observation shape the writing of a life. It will appeal to readers and writers of memoir, scholars of autobiography, and those interested in nature writing. No prior specialist knowledge or preparation is required.

Speaker Details:

Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001), Saving Fish from Drowning (2005), and The Valley of Amazement (2013), as well as two memoirs and several children’s books. Her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. In 2021, she received the National Humanities Medal for expanding the American literary canon. The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024) was a number one New York Times bestseller, praised by Ann Patchett as 'unexpected and spectacular'.

Professor Andrew Gosler holds a joint position between the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and the Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Oxford as Professor of Ethno-ornithology. He co-edited Ethno-ornithology: Birds, Indigenous Peoples, Culture and Society (2010) and co-founded the Ethno-ornithology World Atlas, an international initiative developed with BirdLife International. His contribution has been recognised by Honorary Life Membership of the British Ornithologists’ Union and Honorary Fellowship of the American Ornithological Society.

About the Jeniam Conversations:

Further Details and Contacts:

Join us after the event for a wine reception and book sale by Caper.

This event is free and open to all. If you are able, please consider making a donation of £5, £10, or £20 to support the Centre’s activities and outreach initiatives. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Registration is required. Registration will close at 14:30 on 10/06/2026.

The event will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.

Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.