Author Terry Tempest Williams Visits UW Feb. 2 |
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Jan. 26, 2007 -- Award-winning author and wilderness advocate Terry Tempest Williams will read from her recent book, set in Rwanda, Friday, Feb. 2, at the University of Wyoming.
The free public reading will begin at 5:30 p.m. in UW's College of Education auditorium. The University Bookstore will offer specially priced books at the reception to follow.
A Utah native who recently relocated to Jackson, Williams is a candidate for the inaugural Eminent Writer-in-Residence position with UW's M.F.A. program in creative writing.
Williams found herself in the literary limelight when she published her sixth book, the 1991 memoir "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place." In it, she described the epic rise of the Great Salt Lake that flooded her favorite bird refuge as her mother, who had lived downwind from a nuclear test site, was dying of ovarian cancer.
In 2001, Williams wrote of her lifelong love of the desert and the spiritual and political commitment needed to preserve the fragile Redrock Wilderness in southern Utah in "Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert."
Her other works include two essay collections, "An Unspoken Hunger," and "The Open Space of Democracy," about the ethics of space politics. Williams also wrote "Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape," "Coyote's Canyon," and "Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland," along with two children's books. Her essays and articles, appearing in major magazines, have been widely anthologized.
An activist dedicated to preserving the environment, Williams has served on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society, was a member of the western team for the President's Council for Sustainable Development, the advisory board of the National Parks and Conservation Association, the Nature Conservancy, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. She is the editor of a collection of short stories, "Testimony: Writers Speak on Behalf of Utah Wilderness."
Among her many honors are the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2005 Wallace Stegner Award by the Center for the American West, and the Wilderness Society's highest honor for a private citizen.
Photo
Terry Tempest Williams. (Courtesy Photo)
Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007
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