Maria Mudd Ruth grew up in and around Washington DC. She graduated from college with a B.A. in English in 1982 during the last days of onion-skin paper and manual typewriters. From 1983-1990, Maria worked at the National Geographic Society’s TRAVELER magazine as a researcher and then as a regional editor for the Pacific Coast states. In 1990, she began working fulltime as a freelance writer of non-fiction natural history books. She moved to California in 2001 to write Rare Bird.

Maria currently lives in Olympia, Washington with husband and two sons where she is working on local environmental education projects and a book about the marbled murrelet for young readers.

Why I Wrote Rare Bird

From the moment I first encountered the marbled murrelet on the Internet in 1999, I felt compelled to learn about its strange life and tell its extraordinary story. I know little about birds—even less about seabirds—but I couldn’t resist the call of this chunky, endearing little seabird invariably described as “mysterious,” “elusive,” “secretive,” and “endangered” and its breeding habitat as “ancient,” “magnificent,” and “threatened.” And, I couldn’t resist the call of my Muse to tell a never-before-told story.

I moved my family from Virginia to California in 2001 so that I could dedicate myself fulltime to the research and writing of Rare Bird. The more I learned about this bird and the threats it faces from logging, urbanization, oil spills, and gillnet fishing made me panic. I had to help save this bird. Though the murrelet is on lists of threatened and endangered species in most of its range, the protections have yet to stabilize or recover the rapidly dwindling population of this species

Most of what is known about the marbled murrelet is bound up in scientific journals, not in popular wildlife or nature magazines or books. I wanted to share the stories of this amazing bird with everyone I knew and raise public awareness of its plight. I spent five years in the field, at libraries, at seabird conferences, and at the computer researching and writing Rare Bird.

During those five years, it was thrilling to spend time in the field with biologists, to learn about this bird’s unusual lifestyle, to piece together nearly-lost clues to the great nest mystery as if I were a detective. But it was also easy to become depressed and resigned about the inevitable loss of another of the earth’s species. I worked hard to remain hopeful. Just before I began my writing, I finished a book called Hope is the Thing with Feathers—Christopher Cokinos’ beautiful and sad histories of five extinct birds. The great auk—a relative of the marbled murrelet—is one of them. The last line of the book is this: "I have learned much from this history and have realized, finally, that sadness at loss is our best first response. It should not be our only response. We know the world gives us life, beauty and solace. We would be ungrateful if we failed to give that back."

Rare Bird is a small gesture of my profound gratitude.


Author Events

Over the past ten years, Maria has presented programs to public libraries, schools, homeschool groups, bookstores, and non-profit conservation organizations including the Save-the-Redwoods League, the Sempervirens Fund, California State Parks, and several Audubon Society chapters.

Programs include readings from her published work, talks about the any of the subjects of her books, slide program on the endangered marbled murrelet, and workshops on the writing process and research methods. Each program is tailored to audience ages and interests.

If you’d like Maria to speak to your book club, school, library, or book festival, e-mail the author here: Maria@MariaRuthBooks.com.
 

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