Don Stap

Who is Don Stap?

Don Stap is an American author who writes poetry and nonfiction prose.

Stap grew up in the farm country of southwestern Michigan. Surrounded by hundreds of acres of fields, woods, lakes, and marshes, he developed an interest in the natural world, which is the subject of much of his writing. His mother passed on to him an interest in birds in particular. Stap has a sister and a brother, and a son, Benjamin.

He graduated from Gull Lake High School in 1967 and attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, receiving his B.A. in English in 1972. In 1978, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Utah. He worked for several years as a freelance writer, but since 1985 has taught at the University of Central Florida.

Stap has published a collection of poems, Letter at the End of Winter, and two nonfiction works related to natural history, A Parrot Without a Name and Birdsong.

A Parrot Without a Name focuses on the ornithological exploration of South America and the fieldwork of John O’Neill, who has discovered more than a dozen new species of birds in the neotropics, and the legendary Ted Parker, who could identify more than 4,000 species of birds by their songs alone.