Christine Heinrichs

Growing up in New York’s North Jersey suburbs, I knew nothing about chickens. I started writing about chickens when my daughter asked for some baby chicks, in the 1980s. We lived in San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley. I searched for a book about chickens, but there wasn’t one.

My friends whispered to me, I’ve always wanted to keep chickens. I needed to write a book to help them. Being a writer, I wrote the book I wanted to read.

How to Raise Chickens was published in 2007, just as the local food movement was starting to focus attention on our food system. Backyard chickens became the symbol of local food. How to Raise Poultry followed in 2009. Both have since been updated. The Backyard Field Guide to Chickens was published in 2016.

When How to Raise Chickens was published in 2007, people were puzzled. “Is it a cookbook?” Today, every person I talk to is either raising chickens or knows someone who is. Chickens became the mascot of the local food movement.

I wrote a History of the American Poultry Association, which was part of the APA’s 150^th anniversary celebration in 2023.

I learned about elephant seals as a docent at the Piedras Blancas viewpoint, where I have watched the seals since 2007. I have writen a monthly column for the San Luis Obispo Tribune about them since 2014. The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference awarded my story about three seals that were shot a Ten Spurs award.

Condors are native to the Central Coast, and the recovery program is releasing them into their historic range. I’ve written about them as well, winning a Ten Spurs award from the Maynborn Literary Nonfiction Conference for my story No Condor Falls Unnoticed.

My B.S. is in journalism from the University of Oregon, making me a Fighting Duck. Perhaps that was fortuitous and foretold a future that included a lot of poultry and wildlife! 

I am a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, Northern California Science Writers Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors and Ten Spurs, the honorary society of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. 

Currently, I live on California’s Central Coast, in an unincorporated rural community of Cambria. I compiled the cartoons of a local artist and published them as Capturing Cambria: One Artist, One Town. Currently I’m covering the West Coast Wind projects for local media.

I keep a small flock of 13 hens, some old friends and some newcomers.