The written text is a direct quote from a book titled Birds That Hunt and are Hunted, by Neltje Blanchan, published in 1898. Sarah Smith is currently working on a series of birds from this book, and "Westward the Prairie Chicken" is the third of this series.

Sarah A. Smith was born in Boston, MA and received her BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA (1991). While in Pittsburgh post-art school, she worked as a scenic painter for theater, television and movies. Upon moving to San Francisco during the dot-com boom of 2000, she began working as a decorative artist creating custom paint finishes in private residencies. But it wasn’t until the events of 9/11/01 and a developing obsession with the news that she started making art again in earnest. Ever since then, she’s divided her time between drawing in her studio and faux-finishing people’s homes. Her artwork has been exhibited locally at venues including Southern Exposure, Swarm Gallery, Kala Art Institute and ampersand international arts, and beyond the Bay Area at Beth Urdang Gallery in Boston, MA; 21C in Louisville, KY; and Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh, PA. In 2006 she was an Artist-in-Residence (Project Space) at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Sarah lives and works in San Francisco, CA.