Anne Benvenuti

 Anne Benvenuti, author

My new book Kindred Spirits: One Animal Family is now available!

“Recently, Anne Benvenuti's book called Kindred Spirits: One Animal Family arrived. When I began reading it, I immediately realized that news about her latest work needed to be shared with a broad global audience—both because of its scope and because it focused not only on the nonhumans who benefited from humans who care about them, but also on the moments of transformative contact between the humans and the other animals and how all their lives were changed.”

—renowned animal ethologist Marc Bekoff, interviewing me for Psychology Today, June 2021.

And see Marc’s upcoming book A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans, with Jessica Pierce, to be published later this year! Marc’s work has been for decades a source of insight and inspiration.

Kindred Spirits: One Animal Family was released on June 1, 2021 by The University of Georgia Press, as part of the series Animal Voices / Animal Worlds, edited by Robert W. Mitchell. Order a copy from the University of Georgia Press or from Amazon!

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Spirit Unleashed

Nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction

Spirit Unleashed is a most important book for showing how misleading it is to believe and to live as if there is a great divide between us and other beings. When we pay close attention to what we know about the cognitive, emotional, and moral lives of other animals and when we listen to what they want and need from us. . . it is easy to choose to live in close, respectful, and peaceful coexistence with them. Rewilding our hearts is a natural path for achieving a broad natural spirituality in which all beings will benefit from sharing our magnificent planet. Anne Benvenuti poignantly shows how true this is.”

—Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts

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Kindred Spirits

Published June 1, 2021

“In Kindred Spirits, Anne Benvenuti visits with individuals and groups working in animal conservation, rescue, and sanctuary programs around the world. We meet not only cats and dogs but also ravens, elephants, cheetahs, whales, farm and circus animals, monkeys, even bees. A psychologist and storyteller, Benvenuti focuses on moments of transformative contact between humans and other animals, portraying vividly the resulting ripples that change the lives of both animals and humans. Noting that we are all biologically members of one animal family, she expertly weaves emergent understandings of animal and human neurobiology, showing that the ways in which other animals feel and think are actually similar to humans. Love, grief, fear, rage, sadness, curiosity, play: these are shared by us all, a key insight of affective neuroscience that informs Benvenuti's perceptions of human-animal relationships. She effortlessly drops clues to understanding human motivation and behavior into her narratives, and points to ways in which we all-other animals and humans alike-must come up with creative responses to problems such as climate change.”

—University of Georgia Press

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Yes, that’s my hand!

You can read about this beautiful young whale—whom I encountered in the wilds of Mexico's Magdalena Bay—in chapter 5 of Spirit Unleashed.

Here’s a short excerpt of my story about her:

“There, I was a whale’s toy, but never a thing tossed about, always a being whose needs were being taken into account. The whale recognized that I was an animal who was interested in her, as she was interested in me. I might mention that this is a good enough description of a soul-encounter for my purposes. When was the last time someone recognized your interest in her and returned that by being interested in you?”


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My blog speaks to the ideas and stories in my book Kindred Spirits: One Animal Family published by The University of Georgia Press in its series Animal Voices / Animal Worlds, edited by Robert W. Mitchell. Come with me on the journey!