When Donna Dechen Birdwell was about ten years old, she became obsessed with the idea that if she was thinking with her brain, she ought to be able to think how it works! She’s been trying to wrap her mind around reality (and how humans experience it) ever since. She made a career out of anthropology—that utterly boundless science of humankind and how we got here—and then sidestepped into Buddhist philosophy and then art and photography and writing stories that tend to fall somewhere in the neighborhood of speculative and/or science fiction. She’s a big fan of Ursula LeGuin and N.K. Jemisin.
In her EarthCycles series, Donna imagines a far, far future world in which pockets of survivors of a global apocalypse have evolved new ways of being human. “Not altogether new,” she says. “More like rearrangements of certain aspects of our inherent human potential.” The first volume of EarthCycles, Song of All Songs, received the 2020 silver medal from Self Publishing Review. The book introduces a mixed-race main character making her unique way through a deeply conflicted world. The second book in the series, Book of All Time, is set for release in August of 2021.
Donna’s first trilogy (Recall Chronicles) is set in a hauntingly familiar 22nd-century world in which nobody grows old, an achievement that turns out to be not nearly so utopian as one might expect. Each volume tells the story of a different character’s experience of that world, but the stories are intertwined and some of the same characters turn up in all the books.
A stand-alone contemporary fiction book, Not Knowing, explores intergenerational PTSD in the life of an archaeologist working in Belize. Donna worked as an ethnologist in Belize for many years, so there’s a lot of her heart in this one.
Before anthropology, Donna worked as a newspaper reporter, and beyond anthropology she studied Buddhist philosophy (and practice) and then became an artist and photographer. Her paintings are done in acrylics on handmade Nepali lokta paper. Her primary photographic interest is in Miksang contemplative photography.
Donna earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and previously taught at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://donnadechenbirdwell.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/donnadechen/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wideworldhome/
1. 1. I used to hate my first name, having been
told that “Donna” meant “lady” (as in the Spanish term of address, Doña). It
was the 1960s and we were rebelling against that whole “be a lady” thing. Then
I found out that the name shared its roots with a word meaning “gift” and was
related to the name of the Danube, the great mother river of Europe. I made
peace with being Donna.
2. 2. My middle name “Dechen” is a quasi-pseudonym,
which I adopted upon retirement from my academic career. The name was given to
me by one of my Buddhist teachers. It’s Tibetan for “bliss.”
3. 3. I didn’t start writing fiction until 2014. I
took a creative writing class when I was in college, but I found the professor
so discouraging that I did not pursue it further.
4. 4. My first job out of college was as a
newspaper reporter. I quit that job to sing folk music in bars. That didn’t
work out so well, so I went to graduate school and got a Ph.D. in anthropology.
5. 5. I composed my first poem at the age of four.
I can’t say I “wrote” it because I hadn’t yet learned to write. It was about a
spider that got eaten by a bird.
6. 6. When I was a child, people gave me animals,
including a pygmy rabbit and a kangaroo rat. Or I’d find them and bring them
home. I found two baby possums when I was six. I made friends with stray cats
and adopted their kittens. One of my parents’ friends gave me a beautiful
singing canary!
7. 7. I love birds. I don’t know whether it’s
because of my last name or just an innate attraction. I have a pet conure named
Duende. Yes, that’s also the name my main character, Meridia, gives to her bird
in Song of All Songs.
8. 8. When I knew birds were going to play a role
in Song of All Songs, I signed up for an outdoor workshop on bird
language and communication.
9. 9. I also love language. I’m fairly fluent in Spanish
and know enough French to get along. I studied Irish Gaelic when I was
conducting anthropological research in Ireland and I studied Tibetan when I was
living in Nepal.
110. Yes, I lived in Nepal for a year, teaching English to Buddhist monks and living among them at a monastery where my Buddhist teacher was the abbot. It was a glorious year and I wrote a lot of poems.
Title: SONG OF ALL SONGS: EARTHCYCLES BOOK ONE
Author: Donna Dechen Birdwell
Publisher: Wide World Home
Pages: 375
Genre: Science Fiction
BOOK BLURB:
Long after the apocalypse, Earth has repeopled itself. Twice.
Despised by her mother’s people and demeaned by her absent father’s legacy, Meridia has one friend—Damon, an eccentric photologist. When Damon shows Meridia a stone he discovered in an old photo bag purchased from a vagrant peddler, she is transfixed. There’s a woman, she says, a dancing woman. And a song. Can a rock hold a song? Can a song contain worlds? Oblivious of mounting political turmoil, the two set out to find the old peddler, to find out what he knows about the stone, the woman, and the song. But marauding zealots attack and take Damon captive, leaving Meridia alone. Desolate. Terrified. Yet determined to carry on, to pursue the stone’s extraordinary song, even as it lures her into a journey that will transform her world.
PRAISE
“When anthropologist Donna Dechen Birdwell turns her keen sense of how societies evolved in the past toward imagining a post-apocalyptic future, the result is a thoughtful, nuanced, intelligent thriller.” — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative
“Song of All Songs is a beautifully written and richly realized vision of the future, informed by a deep understanding of humanity.” — Christopher Brown, Campbell and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of Tropic of Kansas and Failed State
“An immersive and visceral vision of the future. This first installment of the EarthCycles series plays out as both a wonderful adventure and a well-crafted prophecy. The economy of language in certain moments is striking, while the poetic flow in other passages makes this novel a delicious pleasure to consume. This rare blend of naked imagination, careful storytelling, poetic flair, and meticulous language is reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin at her best. Showcasing the speculative fiction of a wildly gifted author, Song of All Songs is a very special book – an enigmatic and inventive treasure, and certainly not one to be missed.” –-Self-Publishing Review
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