dnorris10 November 22nd, 2005
Nationally known author and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams returns to The College of Wooster for an extended stay next month. Williams, who last spoke on campus during the 2003 Forum series, has been invited by the Lilly Project for the Exploration of Vocation and the Office of Interfaith Campus Ministries to serve as Wooster’s Theologian-in-Residence.
During her visit, Williams will meet with students, visit classes, and participate in several presentations, including a free public lecture, titled “Gender, Spirituality and the Environment,” on Monday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.). She will also join local Amish author, David Kline, for an informal fireside chat on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 8 p.m. in the formal lounge of Babcock Hall (1315 Beall Ave.). The discussion, which is also open to the community, will focus on issues related to the environment in central Ohio.
Williams has been called a “visionary” by Utne Reader and one likely to have “a considerable impact on the political, economic, and environmental issues facing the western states” by Newsweek magazine. She characterizes herself as a storyteller who reminds the reader what it’s like to be human. “I write through my biases of gender, geography, and culture,” she says. “I am a woman whose ideas have been shaped by the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. These ideas are filtered through the prism of my life as a Mormon. The tenets of family and community, which I see at the heart of culture, are then articulated through story.”
Williams’ most recent book, The Open Space of Democracy, is a series of essays that present a sharp-edged perspective on the ethics and politics of place, spiritual democracy, and the responsibilities of citizen engagement. She also wrote Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, which chronicles the epic rise of Great Salt Lake and the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in 1983, alongside her mother’s diagnosis with ovarian cancer, believed to have been caused by radioactive fallout from the nuclear tests in the Nevada desert in the 1950s and ’60s.
Carl Pope, executive director of The Sierra Club, describes Williams’ writing as hope in a time of despair. “In a season of confrontation, she provides connection,” he said. “Against the passions of war, she wields peace. To the bray of hubris, she speaks quietly of reflection. And all, each magical phrase of it, is rooted in the land she loves.”
Williams’ other books include Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; Pieces of White Shell - A Journey to Navajoland; Coyote’s Canyon; An Unspoken Hunger - Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; and Leap - The Garden of Earthly Delights. In addition, her work has appeared in Audubon, Orion, Outside, The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, Parabola and The Best American Essays. She has also served on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society and other national environmental advocacy groups, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on behalf of women’s health. She is a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship in creative nonfiction, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Community Grant. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from The University of Utah, where she is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in Environmental Studies.
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