Christie Palmer Lowrance has used her passion for writing in her many careers including as editor, biographer and historian, speaker and instructor, and journalist, as well as author of two non-fiction books. Her most recent release is The Last Heath Hen: An Extinction Story (May 2024), written for young readers to show them the complexity of conservation and the importance of valuing all wildlife. You’ll find Christie on ChristieLowrance.com, on Facebook and LinkedIn. Look for The Last Heath Hen on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
When readers turn the last page in the book, what do you hope they’ll take away from it?
I hope adult readers feel they have just had the great good fortune to discover a children’s book they MUST share with friends and colleagues running conservation programs or are Middle Grade classroom teachers — and I hope children feel the beginning of a call to stewardship of wildlife and nature.
What was the spark that got you started researching and writing about the plight of the Heath Hen?
The Heath Hen extinction story is well known to US conservationists. They strongly believe it is uniquely important because, as US Fish and Wildlife Service historian Mark Madison told me, the Heath Hen may be the only North American avian extinction of which the last individual in the wild was documented. I believed it was a worthy and valuable story for children.
In Nature’s Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess (Schiffer, 2013), my biography of naturalist and children’s author Thornton Burgess, I devote seven pages to describing his role in the Heath Hen story. Burgess actually held briefly the last bird of its kind as it was being banded. My website site ChristieLowrance.com has video footage and more detail. My LinkedIn page has a link to my April 22, 2025 Earth Day presentation at US Fish and Wildlife center in West Virginia with actual film footage. It’s very exciting, knowing what you are watching, and it was exciting knowing what I was writing about.
What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Working with an illustrator and a book designer were firsts for me as a writer. Never wanted to self-publish, also a first. However, 2024 was Thornton Burgess’ 150th birthday anniversary, so if I was going to publish the material as a book, it was necessary to get it done quickly.
The technical challenges of publishing would have been, for me as a researcher/writer, insurmountable without the incredibly talented book designer Rose Kern (who obviously needs no SWW introduction!). Ingram Spark has our book in hardcover, but they were impossible to work with for paperback. Amazon has it in hardcover, paperback and e-book.
It was a challenge to tell this extinction story for children without being grim or scary. I thought and thought and my ending finally came to me as a whole idea. Many people have said the ending is perfect. It soothes me and I hope it soothes readers young or old.
How did the book come together?
The text had been written shortly after my Burgess biography was published in 2013, figured I would use it sometime as a magazine article or maybe a book. Found the illustrator at a Sandwich Arts Alliance meet-and-greet of writers and illustrators, my very lucky day! Rose and I worked hard on all aspects of book layout and design. Couldn’t have done it, literally, without her expertise and ideas.
I knew the basic Heath Hen story well because as it was part of my research for the biography of Thornton Burgess. To flesh it out carefully and artistically, fact check, and create a narrative suitable for children took a year in all. The creation of the book with illustrations and design, in all maybe another year.
What was it like working with illustrator Michael Berndt? Do you have a favorite image or page spread from The Last Heath Hen?
Michael Berndt was a writer’s dream. I picked him because he could paint people, landscape and animals; he was effortless to work with: flexible, receptive, creative, supportive of the project. He knew nothing of Burgess or Heath Hens as he explained in his Illustrator Notes (which I asked him to write, to accompany my Author Notes, to explain our process). My PowerPoint presentations include many of his paintings, I admire them all but I so love the gorgeous cover illustration of the bird itself: so beautiful, so alone, expectant, alert, composed. A dessert plate with a painting of two game birds I bought on my 1968 honeymoon in Bermuda was a basis for the cover.
What was the most rewarding aspect of putting this project together?
I have been a professional writer for 50 years. My travel books, articles, etc. were to provide information. But this book has a bigger mission. It is intended to support the work of conservationists and teachers by giving them a teaching tool, a true, child-sized story of a small bird on a small island off Massachusetts, not dinosaurs millions of years ago. It is intended to help children understand extinction, a complex and increasingly common event in nature that we need to be fiercely attentive to. And as Burgess knew, children are the right and perfect audience to inspire.
What first inspired you to become a writer? When did you actually consider yourself a writer?
I simply love to write. Use of the written word has always made sense to me. It has always felt good. I wrote a story when I was 10, describing an old scary house up the street; seeing my thoughts down on a blank page felt so deeply satisfying. No one had required it of me, the idea and the words came from me, it was my child’s knowledge that had produced them. I think I was born feeling this way.
Being a Writer, however, that was a different matter. Even though I had literally hundreds and hundreds of bylines as a reporter for the Bath-Brunswick Times Record in Maine and the Cape Cod Times, I would never call myself “a Writer.” I wrote but that did not mean I was “a Writer.” I had to earn that title by some unknown internal standard. It was a matter of identity. After seeing my first major magazine article for Cape Cod Life magazine, probably 3,000 words, it started to change; as I wrote for regional and national magazines and publications, I became by my own standard a Writer. Over my career I’ve been an author, editor and marketing specialist, and taught writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Cape Cod Community College. I love writing’s versatility.
Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you started your writing/publishing career today?
Nothing comes to mind. That said, it would be enormously helpful to be more tech savvy; when I started writing professionally, I used a manual typewriter and carbon paper and had a family and a household to care for.
Do I wish I had started writing books earlier? Sort of. But I was freelance writing, and every assignment was interesting, I was always learning. Also, I believe in the writing process. It’s a variation on “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” With writers, it’s “When the writer is ready, the material appears.” So maybe I’m writing books when I’m ready to write books?
Do you prefer the creating or editing aspect of writing? How do you feel about research?
I love it all. I gave a talk a while ago for SouthWest Writers on “Finding the Story,” on the amazing and unexpected things a researcher comes across, deliberately and accidentally. Research is like free falling, you open up your mind, step forward and fall into it. Of course, I love the creating and the editing (who could stand being a writer if they didn’t). Editing is quite pleasant, creating is harder. I once edited two novels, 800 and 700 pages, for a non-native English-speaking writer gifted with narrative development but his use of idioms was constantly off, like a singer who is always flat. I wouldn’t have edited a third book.
What writing projects are you working on now?
I am writing a biography titled Ships and Shards: The Legacy of Dr. George F. Bass. It is tremendously important to me because it is a privilege and a massive challenge. Archaeologist George Bass, world renowned as “the Father of Underwater Archaeology” loved my Burgess biography and provided me with five years of interviews. I have amazing material to work with.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
I don’t believe in writers block per se, but maybe it’s different with fiction and non-fiction? Don’t know. When things don’t come, I get up, go for a cup of coffee, a walk, anything to release my focus from the problem. Shifting my attention helps restore the clarity I need. That said, I do know what it feels like when your brain is tired and refuses to work. That happened with the Bass project I’m working on now, work started in 2015, and in 2019 I finally had to stop writing. I’d been working on biographies for 10 years. I took a break for two years (book not under contract) and when I returned, not only was I refreshed, but I had a stronger, seasoned, and more informed view of my subject. Lesson learned.
I’m working on Ships and Shards daily now and will be looking for an agent/publisher later this year.
…feel free to check out my website, which also soothes me.
KL Wagoner loves creating worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Her current work in progress is The Last Bonekeeper fantasy trilogy and short stories in the same universe. A member of SouthWest Writers since 2006, Kat has worked as the organization’s secretary, newsletter editor, website manager, and author interview coordinator. Kat is also a veteran, a martial art student, and a grandmother. Visit her at klwagoner.com.
