Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams (born 1955), is an American author, naturalist, and environmental activist. The main subject of her writings is the deserts of the American West. She is considered an ecologist and a naturalist, but writes about other issues as well, including issues of feminism, health/cancer issues, and the Mormon culture.

Biography

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, within sight of the Great Salt Lake, which influenced her writing, she was raised a fifth-generation Mormon. She studied environmental education at the University of Utah, then worked at the Utah Museum of Natural History, first as curator of education and later as naturalist-in-residence. She now lives in Castle Valley, Utah, with her husband Brooke, who also serves as director of the Murie Center in Jackson Hole. Terry also serves on the board of Round River Conservation Studies, an international wildlife conservation organization based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Williams is best known for her book "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place" published in 1991. The book interweaves memoir and natural history, recounting her mother's battle with ovarian cancer along with the concurrent flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, a place special to Williams since childhood. The book's epilogue, "The Clan of One-Breasted Women," explores whether the high incidence of cancer in her family might be due to their status as downwinders during the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and 60s.

Her work as an editor on "Testimony: Writers Speak On Behalf of Utah Wilderness" included assembling twenty American writers to write on the significance of protecting the wilderness. This book was held up as an influence at the dedication ceremony of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Grand Canyon in 1996.

Among her other books are "Pieces of White Shell," "An Unspoken Hunger," "Leap," "Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert," and "The Open Space of Democracy." She also has written two natural history books for children.

Written works

• The Secret Language of Snow co-authored with Ted Major, 1984.
• Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland, 1984.
• Between Cattails, 1985.
• Coyote's Canyon, 1989.
• Earthly Messengers, 1989.
• Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, 1991, ISBN 0-679-74024-4.
• An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, 1994.
• Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape, 1995.
• Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Centennial Reader, 1995.
• Testimony: Writers in Defense of the Wilderness, 1996.
• New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community, 1998.
• Leap, 2000.
• Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, 2001.
• The Open Space of Democracy, 2004.

Achievements and positions held

• Governing Council of The Wilderness Society
• President's Council for Sustainable Development, western team member
• National Parks and Conservation Association, advisory board member
• Round River Conservation Studies, board member
• The Nature Conservancy
• Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
• Advocate for America's Redrock Wilderness Act
• Former naturalist-in-residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History
• Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in the Environmental Humanities Program at the University of Utah
• Honorary Doctor of Humanities, the University of Utah, 2003
• Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, 2004
• 2005 Wallace Stegner Award for the Center for the American West

Awards

• Inducted into the Rachel Carson Honor Roll
• National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Award for Special Achievement
• One of the "Utne Reader's" "Utne 100 Visionaries"
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• Lannan Literary Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction

References

• Anderson, Lorraine, John P. O'Grady, and Scott Slovic, eds. Literature and the Environment. New York: Longman, 1999.

External links

• Coyote Clan - Terry Tempest Williams' Home Page
• Whole Terrain link to Williams' articles published in Whole Terrain