come from your exchanges with your local flock? Or were your interactions with them a result of wanting to learn more about your “crowtagonist?”īuxton: I had already started writing Hollow Kingdom when I developed a relationship with my crows. Rumpus: Thousands of crows live in the Seattle area.

I spend more time with animals than I do people-at a party, I’m the girl in the corner consorting with the host’s golden retriever or goldfish. My two crows (a mated pair) informed some of the behaviors and idiosyncrasies of S.T. Winnie the Poodle is based on a pampered poodle I know and love. One of them is a tabby named Genghis Cat, who is based upon one of my own cats-a tyrannical tabby I worship. Although Hollow Kingdom is narrated by a crow, there are interstitial chapters that follow other animals around the world. Kira Jane Buxton: I have an indoor menagerie-three cats and a bearded dog-and I have also befriended wild birds, including a charm of hummingbirds, two juncos, and two crows. The Rumpus: I know you have a coterie of animals you hang out with. During our visit, we spoke about crows, conservation, and craft. Walking through the trails and past animal enclosures provided an eerie reminder of what happens in Hollow Kingdom within that very space. So how does a writer with a talent for the literary make a reader laugh, cry, and reconsider both their impact on the planet and the way we look at novel genres? Kira Jane Buxton, a writer with publication credits in the New Yorker online, the New York Times, and more, gives us an idea.Īfter talking over email, Kira met me at the Woodland Park Zoo, a central setting in her book. I came for the Cheetos-loving crow but stayed for the lush writing, and in the end, I was left in tears.

says in the book: “life isn’t the same once you learn how deeply a tree feels.” Delivered with humor and intelligence, Hollow Kingdom shows us the most literal repercussions of nature’s commercialization. In a time when climate change threatens every creature’s way of life, when thousand-year floods and catastrophic wildfires are devastating landscapes and lives, Hollow Kingdom is a tale with an ominous and real warning. Told from the point of view of a domesticated crow named S.T., readers are led into a post-apocalyptic Seattle to search for answers as to why humans are turning into zombies.īut this is not just another zombie book. Kira Jane Buxton’s Hollow Kingdom (Grand Central Publishing, August 2019) is making big waves in the literary world.

Kira jane buxton