You grew up in West Chicago and lived there as a child. Did you read a lot growing up? Did you think that being a writer was in your future? We spoke with Kirk about The Feather Thief and The List Project. He began studying Arabic after a visit to Egypt with his grandmother, skipping his high school graduation to study at the Arabic Language Institute at the American University in Cairo. Johnson and Virginia Johnson, a policy adviser to the Illinois Attorney General, Kirk has traveled internationally from a young age. The son of State Representative Thomas L. Kirk would travel the world in his search to learn more, led to Amsterdam where he meet with Edwin Rist, who has escaped being sentenced to prison because of a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. I realized that the loss it represented turned into a loss in scientific understanding.” “It struck me as impossible to hear about a museum heist of dead birds carried out by a student flautist to meet the insatiable demand of salmon fly-tiers and not want to learn more. It was a welcoming diversion from the unrelenting pressure of my work with the refugees. “I found it so bizarre as to be captivating-quirky and obsessive individuals, strange birds in curio cabinets, archaic fly recipes. The crime was regarded not only as pilfering from dusty drawers in a museum basement but stealing knowledge from humanity.Īs feathers from the birds made it onto coded web sites and lured fly-tiers to spend huge amounts of money, Kirk was hot on the trail: The birds, several of which had become extinct, were considered archival relics from a lost era.

The theft had instant international impact. Edwin Rist, 2010 (Image copyright: PA IMAGES).

The feather thief