Owens grew up in rural Georgia in the 1950s. She and her then-husband, Mark Owens, were students in biology at the University of Georgia. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis. In their early 20's, working on a shoestring, they self funded a research expedition in Deception Valley in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana in 1974. The area had had virutally no outside human contact, and many of the area's predators had little fear of people. The Owens initially concentrated their research on the social lives of brown hyenas. The work caught the attention of the scientific community, and they soon were funded by the National Geographic Society, the Frankfurt Zoological Society and others, afterwhich they expanded their work into studying lions and promoting conservation. Their popular book, Cry of the Kalahari, published in 1984, was a New York Times #1 bestseller. Since completing her PhD in Biology Delia has published her studies of African wildlife behavioral ecology in professional journals, including Nature, the Journal of Mammalogy, Animal Behaviour, and the African Journal of Ecology. She has also contributed articles to Natural History and International Wildlife aimed at a wider audience. The Owens were expelled from Botswana after mobilizing an international campaign to stop the fencing of wildebeest by cattle ranchers, and so moved their research to the North Luangwa National Park, and later to Mpika, Zambia, in the early 1990s. Although the areas had a reputation as relatively pristine wilderness, they found elephant poaching to be rampant. Understanding the economic necessity of local, subsistence-based hunting, the Owens helped establish alternative sources of income, including grinding mills, fishponds, and sunflower-oil presses. ABC aired a report in 1996 entitled "Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story", produced by Andrew Tkach and hosted by Meredith Vieira. The report featured the controversial killing of a poacher in Zambia, allegedly committed by her stepson and husband. The Owens denied all charges and have since worked to clear their names with the Zambian authorities. Delia continues to write. Her 2018 novel, "Where the Crawdads Sing," about a young girl who raises herself in the swamps of North Carolina, is an international bestseller. Delia and Mark Owens are divorced. Delia Owens lives in Boundary County, Idaho. Owens is the co-founder of the in Stone Mountain, GA. She has also worked as a roving editor for International Wildlife, lectured throughout North America, and participated in conservation efforts for the grizzly bear throughout the United States.
