My Search for the Snow Monkeys of South Texas
In the half-century since a troop of Japanese macaques arrived in Texas, a truly wild tale has played out.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and journalist. She has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller, a nine-time winner of the Austin Chronicle’s best fiction writer award, a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award, and an Alex Award nominee. Her books have been included on the Library Journal Best Books, Amazon Best Books of the Year, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, and New York Public Libraries Books to Remember lists. She is a Texas Literary Hall of Fame honoree and was a Dobie Paisano fellow.
She has written for O magazine, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Texas Observer, Texas Highways, Slate, the Daily Beast, and Salon, and she was the back-page columnist for Texas Monthly for five years starting in 2005. During a ten-year career as a screenwriter, she wrote for Warner Bros., TNT, Paramount, Hallmark, National Geographic, ABC, CBS, and many independent producers. In 2015 she was selected to attend Meryl Streep’s Writers Lab.
Bird cofounded the Writers League of Texas, is the 2020 winner of the University of New Mexico’s Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize, and was selected as the “hologram” greeter at Austin Central Library in 2017.
Her latest book, A Juneteenth Rodeo: Let’s Go! Let’s Show! Let’s Rodeo!, a book of photos she shot at Black rodeos while working as a photojournalist in the late 1970s, will be published by UT Press on Juneteenth 2024.
After a nomadic Air Force childhood, Bird is happy to have found a forever home in Austin with her G-men—George and Gabriel—and Collie, arguably the world’s cutest corgi.
In the half-century since a troop of Japanese macaques arrived in Texas, a truly wild tale has played out.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Organized crime! Illicit booze! The beach! In this exclusive excerpt from her new novel ‘Last Dance on the Starlight Pier,’ Sarah Bird explores Galveston at the end of the twenties, a setting she calls “a gift to a novelist.”
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
He wasn’t always kind, but he was kind to me in ways that mattered a great deal.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
How I ended up spending my panel appearance at the Texas Book Festival lying on a bench and drooling on the floor.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Developing my twisted sense of humor was a family affair.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
When Dallas’s very own Marvin Lee Aday—that’s Meat Loaf to you—optioned one of my screenplays, he didn’t just offer me a glimpse of paradise by the dashboard lights. He also helped me write a novel.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
In an excerpt from Sarah Bird's new novel The Gap Year, a single mom prepares to send her only daughter off to college. Guess which one is a wreck.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Help! My voice recognition software is making me save airy funnel things witch nobody wonder Stans.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Am I the only person who has always wanted to get picked for jury duty?
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Turns out being a test subject for a dermatology research lab is not the best thing that could ever happen to a girl.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
It was the breast of times, it was the worst of times.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love my formerly ugly, recently hip, linoleum-clad, mid-mod house.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
All my friends are going to be status updates.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Every female on earth believes she can dance. My big break came when a Bob Hope wannabe with shiny suits and a pinkie ring took me on as his sidekick for a two-week tour of Tokyo.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My trashy, sordid, steamy, decently paid turn as a writer for the pulps.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Eating high on the hog when you’re low on the totem pole.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My only son is leaving for college, and I’m weeping through Mamma Mia! Lord help me.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Introducing the Dean of Doors, in all his doorificence.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Putting the fun in fun bags! The mommy in mommy muffins! (I could go on.)
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
In this excerpt from writer-at-large Sarah Bird’s new novel, How Perfect Is That, the realities of life in early twenty-first century Austin become all-too-clear to a defrocked socialite.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Hey, captains of industry: If Dr. Evil can have a Mini Me, why can’t the rest of us?
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My Petco encounter with a shampoo celebrity.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Greetings from Snowbirdlandia! Wish you were old.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
One year (okay, two days) of livin’ la vida locavore.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Suburban mom seeks motorcycle jacket.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Let’s go to the science fair!
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
I subject myself to yet another seminal Texas experience: the hunt.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My instructor is a Flabbo Nazi, and other tales from the aerobics wars.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Bill Zedler’s plan to keep me married—forever.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Getting in touch with my inner bargain hunter.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My short, happy life as a poker player.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
The absurdity of the college visit (and why you should leave your kids at home).
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Texas versus Iowa State versus me.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
The day I slithered from movie theater to movie theater.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Nora Ephron’s wattle, and Ann Richards’s, and mine.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Teen Boy’s sugar-free education.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
I’m a slob. There, I said it. Now don’t mess with me.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Teen Boy gets behind the wheel.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
A few sore points about HMOs— and two thumbs-up for the acupuncturist.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My dancing feet. And, hopefully, yours.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
There is a world where the kings of small African countries send cases of Dom Pérignon as hostess gifts, where you get to choose between the white-striped chinchilla and the violet beaver shearling poncho. Who let me in?
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Ladies’ fashion is nothing if not a fantasy inside an illusion wrapped in a thong. Every season, there is a new “look,” a new “trend,” a new “paranoid schizophrenic thought disorder.” And then there are returns.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Living proof that moms shouldn’t take the SAT.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
The quest for the perfect author photo (or at least one I can live with).
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My short, happy life as a Catholic schoolgirl.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
That jerkwad talking on his phone in the movie theater.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
Man, do I hate book clubs.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
My family unplugs (for a few days).
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
What high school is really like.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.
It can be achieved—if you have a surprise wedding.
Writer-at-large Sarah Bird is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and essayist.