News
2026 Centre County Readers Talk About Crows
As winter turned to spring, Centre County Reads held many engaging, community-oriented programs centered on Eileen Garvin’s Crow Talk. The novel follows Frankie O’Neill, an ornithology graduate student; Anne Ryan, a mother and wife who teaches traditional Irish music at the Cornish College of the Arts; her son, Aidan; and a young injured crow. On a lake in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, Garvin crafts a story of intersecting lives, families, and species.
CALS and the Centre County Library System offered several events inspired by the novel, including numerous community book discussions, the “Art of Observation” writing contest, a lecture on the “roosting behavior of urban crows” at Millbrook Marsh by Dr. Margaret Brittingham, Professor Emerita of Wildlife Resources at Penn State, and an author visit from Eileen Garvin.
Book Discussions
From January through March, the Centre County Library System held several book discussions, both in-person and hybrid, for Crow Talk. Participants delved into the “beautifully descriptive” prose and the novel’s sense of place. Of particular interest was the realm of academia, with some participants sharing their own experiences as graduate students and relating to Frankie’s experience writing her master’s thesis and struggling with alienation from her academic advisor.
Participants noted parallels between Frankie and Aiden’s communication styles, wondering if Garvin had intentionally given Frankie traits that could have been read as autistic, which adds
levels of meaning to the relationship between the two. Central to the discussion was the novel's portrayal of crows, and many participants talked about the birds they love in their own backyards and how State College has historically dealt with the birds as “pests.” Reading Crow Talk certainly made readers think more deeply about the birds they coexist with in their daily lives.
Writing Contest
CALS hosted “The Art of Observation” writing contest inspired by the novel’s portrait of two families (and a crow) learning to understand each other and the world around them. Frankie, an ornithology graduate student, learns what it means to observe, notice, and write about what is right outside her door. Entrants to this year’s writing contest submitted pieces of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that “centers on a space of observation—and what can be learned from the art of careful noticing.” Winning entries can be read online here.
Author Visit
On April 1st, Eileen Garvin virtually visited Centre County for a conversation moderated by Amanda Passmore-Ott, Associate Teaching Professor at Penn State. Garvin began by sharing some of what makes her a writer and continues to inspire her, “Most days I would say my impulse to write lies between...the mind of a border collie and the secret hope to achieve some positive effect on the world,” but that the best representation of the desire to be creative was from Neko Case’s memoir, where she writes of her creative impulses, “I can’t help it.”
Her idea for the book Crow Talk came while she was outside, as she “always get a lot of solace from spending time in the woods.” In the spring of 2020, when all of the trails in her town were closed for health reasons, Garvin retreated to her small family cabin in Idaho, arriving there by crossing a lake as a large storm began. Readers might remember the quiet cabin Frankie retreated to in her own time of need, and that fateful storm from the finale of the book.
Passmore-Ott, who took questions from local Book Clubs and the audience, asked Garvin about her own experience in academia. While she did not have firsthand experience in graduate school, like her character Frankie, she asked many of her friends who had graduate experience in a range of fields—she said, “Half the fun of writing is that you are constantly inhabiting other lives."
Garvin also told the story of an interaction she had while she was on a walk with a friend with a large bird—a bard owl—who swooped down and attacked her ponytail because it mistook it for food. Her friend drew a photo of the encounter, and although she ended up deciding on making the main figure of the book a crow, this encounter helped attune her to the birds around her. She chose the crow because she wanted to focus on really common birds, ones that are often overlooked, or misunderstood. Many people have oppositional feelings towards crows and Garvin wanted to highlight the beauty and intelligence of a bird so many of us take for granted.
Garvin also offered some stories and books with crows that inspired her, which include the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers—she noted that once you start looking for them, you see crows in stories everywhere!
Other books she used for research that she recommended included The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman; Birdology, by Sy Montgomery; H is for Hawk and Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald; and Crow Planet, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.
Garvin concluded by thanking the audience for coming together and reading, saying, “It is a wonderful, old-fashioned, homemade thing to read a book, hold it in your hands—it’s not on the algorithm—and then talk about it with people. It’s a wonderful, human way to engage, so as a writer and also as a reader, thank you for continuing that old-fashioned tradition.”
This year, Crow Talk truly engaged Centre County readers, captivating them while also prodding them to be more attentive to the world around them— and left us all talking about crows! For more, read this review of Crow Talk.
As winter turned to spring, Centre County Reads held many engaging, community-oriented programs centered on Eileen Garvin’s Crow Talk. The novel follows Frankie O’Neill, an ornithology graduate student; Anne Ryan, a mother and wife who teaches traditional Irish music at the Cornish College of the Arts; her son, Aidan; and a young injured crow. On a lake in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, Garvin crafts a story of intersecting lives, families, and species.
CALS and the Centre County Library System offered several events inspired by the novel, including numerous community book discussions, the “Art of Observation” writing contest, a lecture on the “roosting behavior of urban crows” at Millbrook Marsh by Dr. Margaret Brittingham, Professor Emerita of Wildlife Resources at Penn State, and an author visit from Eileen Garvin.
Book Discussions
From January through March, the Centre County Library System held several book discussions, both in-person and hybrid, for Crow Talk. Participants delved into the “beautifully descriptive” prose and the novel’s sense of place. Of particular interest was the realm of academia, with some participants sharing their own experiences as graduate students and relating to Frankie’s experience writing her master’s thesis and struggling with alienation from her academic advisor.
Participants noted parallels between Frankie and Aiden’s communication styles, wondering if Garvin had intentionally given Frankie traits that could have been read as autistic, which adds
levels of meaning to the relationship between the two. Central to the discussion was the novel's portrayal of crows, and many participants talked about the birds they love in their own backyards and how State College has historically dealt with the birds as “pests.” Reading Crow Talk certainly made readers think more deeply about the birds they coexist with in their daily lives.
Writing Contest
CALS hosted “The Art of Observation” writing contest inspired by the novel’s portrait of two families (and a crow) learning to understand each other and the world around them. Frankie, an ornithology graduate student, learns what it means to observe, notice, and write about what is right outside her door. Entrants to this year’s writing contest submitted pieces of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that “centers on a space of observation—and what can be learned from the art of careful noticing.” Winning entries can be read online here.
Author Visit
On April 1st, Eileen Garvin virtually visited Centre County for a conversation moderated by Amanda Passmore-Ott, Associate Teaching Professor at Penn State. Garvin began by sharing some of what makes her a writer and continues to inspire her, “Most days I would say my impulse to write lies between...the mind of a border collie and the secret hope to achieve some positive effect on the world,” but that the best representation of the desire to be creative was from Neko Case’s memoir, where she writes of her creative impulses, “I can’t help it.”
Her idea for the book Crow Talk came while she was outside, as she “always get a lot of solace from spending time in the woods.” In the spring of 2020, when all of the trails in her town were closed for health reasons, Garvin retreated to her small family cabin in Idaho, arriving there by crossing a lake as a large storm began. Readers might remember the quiet cabin Frankie retreated to in her own time of need, and that fateful storm from the finale of the book.
Passmore-Ott, who took questions from local Book Clubs and the audience, asked Garvin about her own experience in academia. While she did not have firsthand experience in graduate school, like her character Frankie, she asked many of her friends who had graduate experience in a range of fields—she said, “Half the fun of writing is that you are constantly inhabiting other lives."
Garvin also told the story of an interaction she had while she was on a walk with a friend with a large bird—a bard owl—who swooped down and attacked her ponytail because it mistook it for food. Her friend drew a photo of the encounter, and although she ended up deciding on making the main figure of the book a crow, this encounter helped attune her to the birds around her. She chose the crow because she wanted to focus on really common birds, ones that are often overlooked, or misunderstood. Many people have oppositional feelings towards crows and Garvin wanted to highlight the beauty and intelligence of a bird so many of us take for granted.
Garvin also offered some stories and books with crows that inspired her, which include the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers—she noted that once you start looking for them, you see crows in stories everywhere!
Other books she used for research that she recommended included The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman; Birdology, by Sy Montgomery; H is for Hawk and Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald; and Crow Planet, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.
Garvin concluded by thanking the audience for coming together and reading, saying, “It is a wonderful, old-fashioned, homemade thing to read a book, hold it in your hands—it’s not on the algorithm—and then talk about it with people. It’s a wonderful, human way to engage, so as a writer and also as a reader, thank you for continuing that old-fashioned tradition.”
This year, Crow Talk truly engaged Centre County readers, captivating them while also prodding them to be more attentive to the world around them— and left us all talking about crows! For more, read this review of Crow Talk.