Wendy S. Walters is a non-fiction writer and poet, who holds a MFA/PHD in Poetry and Literature from Cornell University. She is the former Associate Dean of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons, The New School. Currently she serves as Director of the Nonfiction Concentration and Associate Professor of Writing, Nonfiction in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

While Walters was living in L.A. during the early 2000s, she wrote a chapbook, or short collection of poems, about the city called The Birds of Los Angeles. A number of themes are woven through the collection, including the Iraq War, trying to make sense of images, how we treat the things and people we love, and the birds that caught her attention.

• Prophet as Slow Bird
• Hollywood Finches
• Either I Watch a War on TV

You can read the poems in today's episode on our website