An Animal’s Intuition
New York Times best-selling author, Sophy Burnham, recently released her thirteenth book, The Art of Intuition: Cultivating Your Inner Wisdom. During this podcast, Sophy and I focused our discussion on chapter 6 in her book which dealt with the intuition that animals have and animal intuitives / communicators. In addition, we talked about her first experience where she heard her dog, Puck, say, “Wait! Wait for me!”. As you can imagine, this was a total surprise to Sophy (as it probably would be to anyone not used to this happening)!
BIO:
Sophy Burnham grew up in the horse country of Maryland, attended private girls' schools and graduated from smith college in Northampton, Massachusetts, with honors in Italian language and literature. she wrote her thesis on the writer Italo Svevo (a friend of James Joyce) and the nature of reality.
After college, Sophy took a job as a clerk at the Smithsonian institution, and when she left six years later, was head of the organization's newly established film and television studios. she produced two films and a TV program for the Smithsonian, one of which was sent to the Venice film festival. the Smithsonian published her first "book," a pamphlet on the exhibits.
When her husband accepted a job in New York City, she moved to the big apple. there she discovered that young girls (in those days anyway) did not write and direct and produce films, and wanting time to be with her new baby, Sarah, she decided to teach herself to write. she'd do it, she decided, by selling articles to magazines, and in a few years had published in esquire, new York, Redbook, town and country, the reader's digest and the new York times magazine. now fully immersed in the writing world, Sophy, at the age of 33, finished her first nonfiction book, the art crowd, an explosive work of investigative reporting that exposed the corruption of the contemporary art market of dealers, auctions, critics, collectors and museums. it was her first bestseller. in the process, Sophy so impressed her publishing house, David McKay, that she began part-time work there as an acquisitions editor.
A few years later Sophy, her husband and their two daughters, Sarah and molly, returned to Washington, D.C.in addition to writing more works of nonfiction, Sophy wrote award-winning plays for stage and radio as well as two children's novels that served as her training ground for the adult novels and spiritually inclined books for which she has become world renowned.
Meanwhile, active in the d. c. theater community, she was a founding member of the studio theater in Washington, as well as of the D.C.community humanities council, (the re-granting arm of the national humanities council). in 1991, she became executive director of the fund for new American plays at the john f. Kennedy center for the performing arts, where she worked closely for five years with famed Broadway producer Roger Stevens, awarding money to theaters to produce new plays and to playwrights to writer them.
Today, Sophy divides her time between Washington, D.C.and Taos, New Mexico. she delights in spending time with friends, her daughters and four granddaughters and with her beautiful horse.
Sophy is a prolific public speaker, frequently giving workshops and talks on a wide range of topics, from the spiritual to the creative process and writing.