- 49 Henry Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Benson
Cara Benson
Cara Benson’s writing has been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Orion Magazine, Sierra Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Terrain, and selected for Best American Poetry. Her memoir An Armsfull of Birds was released in 2026 and explores themes of recovery, love, loss, and healing.
Her first book, a collection of prose poems called (made), was well reviewed in The Huffington Post and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the bpNichol Award. Benson wrote a series on walking in the woods for the Best American Poetry website and taught poetry in a NY State Correctional Facility for eight years. She lives in a former church on the ancestral homelands of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians in Upstate NY.
Books
ABOUT THE BOOK
A story of recovery, love, and loss—a memoir of healing ourselves and the natural world.
In An Armsfull of Birds, Cara Benson reflects on a journey marked by addiction, recovery, profound love, and unimaginable loss. After the death of her husband, she retreats to the forests of upstate New York, where grief gradually gives way to a deeper connection with the natural world. As she tends to birds, trees, and the changing landscape around her, Benson discovers that caring for the earth can become an act of healing, remembrance, and hope.
Blending memoir with reflections on the environment, An Armsfull of Birds is a moving exploration of resilience, love, and the ways we find purpose after loss.