Listen to an exceptional interview by co-host Erika as she talks to Sarah Bird a great American novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. Sarah was born in 1949 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her father was an officer in the US Air Force, and her family (a “Catholic family of eight”[1]), including her mother, Colista Bird, travelled with him around the US and the world during her childhood. This is the subject of the novel that Erika talks about with Sarah, The Yokota Officers Club the mother recognized signs of her daughter’s creative storytelling talent as young as kindergarten.

Sarah attended the University of New Mexico, earning a BA there in 1973. Moving to the University of Texas at Austin, she went on to receive an MA in journalism there in 1976.[2] She is married to George Jones, and has one son, Gabriel Bird-Jones, born in 1989. The family lives in Austin, Texas.

Bird was named Austin’s best author in 2001 by the Austin Chronicle, the year she also published The Yokata Officers Club that draws on her experiences as military brat. She has also written screenplays for the National Geographic Channel and Hallmark, as well as the CBS movie Yesterday’s Children.

Another novel, The Flamenco Academy, came out in 2006. A new novel, How Perfect Is That, was published by Knopf in June 2008.