To Touch The Water

At the time To Touch the Water was published, Gretel Ehrlich was a filmmaker, essayist, editor, cow- and sheepherder, part of both the West and New York, as well as a poet. The poems here speak deeply of personal experience. They are portraits of the people who have pressed their lives on hers; strong open images of the landscapes that are the West, complete with storms, drought, sun and wind; love poems as large and grainy as the landscapes. Death is never far away. Although her poems are personal in detail, they speak to all about the truths love and life hold

Reading: Gretel Ehrlich

In this audiovisual recording from April 4, 1989 as part of the 20th annual UND Writing Conference: “Circle of Many Colors,” Gretel Ehrlich reads from Heart Mountain and an excerpt from a drafted essay. Introduced by Sheryl O\u27Donnell

Gretel Ehrlich, 14th Annual ODU Literary Festival

Novelist, poet, and essayist, Gretel Ehrlich is the Whitman of Wyoming, writing about that vast landscape with the same poetic intensity Whitman used for 19th century America at large. She has published two books of poetry, short story collections, and a book of narrative essays. Ehrlich, a California native, first went to Wyoming as a documentary filmmaker. She began to write full-time in 1979 and has also worked on ranches lambing, branding, herding sheep, and calving. She now lives with her husband on a ranch in Shell, Wyoming. She was educated at Bennington College, UCLA Film School, and the New School for Social Research. Her prose pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Time, and Harper\u27s. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming Council for the Arts. Heart Mountain, her novel, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. A new book of essays, Islands, The Universe, Home, will be published this fall. Newsday called her collection of essays that focuses on life in Wyoming, The Solace of Open Spaces, a stunning rumination on life...Ehrilich\u27s gorgeous prose is as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning. Ehrlich will read from her new collection of essays at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, October 8, in the Hampton-Newport News Room in Webb Center. She will also discuss the craft of writing non-fiction at 3 p.m. on October 8 in the Hampton-Newport News Room

Heart mountain

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Panel: Landscapes

This audiovisual recording from April 3, 1989 as part of the 20th annual UND Writing Conference: “Circle of Many Colors” features Gretel Ehrlich, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff forming the panel “Landscapes.” The panelists discuss notions of landscape, truth among readers, their ideas of nature and geology, literary perspectives on landscape, relationships between humans and land, what North Dakotans seek in literature, learning the craft of writing through reading, notions of beauty in landscapes, the ability for landscape to evoke language, the responsibility of humans to protect the environment, narrative being confined by landscape, and changing perspectives over time. Moderator: Sheldon Green

Panel: Sacred Ground, Sacred Words

This audiovisual recording from April 4, 1989 as part of the 20th annual UND Writing Conference: “Circle of Many Colors” features Gretel Ehrlich, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff forming the panel “Sacred Ground, Sacred Words.” The panelists discuss their notions of sacredness, literary perceptions of the sacred, power of language, humility, inherent dangers in writing, the effect of history on characters, self-censorship, distinction and voice in fiction and nonfiction, dynamics of agency concerning language, the importance of discipline in writing, work habits, joining humor with seriousness, their approach to making mistakes as writers, and the monetary side of writing. Moderated by Libby Rankin

Burning Ice : Art & Climate Change

" The High Artic stands at the front line of climate change. Cape Farewell's international team of artists and climate scientists have made three expeditions to this remote, frozen world, sailing on a 100-year old schooner, the Noorderlicht. The team conducted oceanography xperiments and gained artistic inspiration from this fragile ice-bound environment. The aim of the project is to address the burning issue of climate change by providing first hand accounts and data, and produce artworks that provide a human scale for a problem that often seems too huge to comprehend. This book celebrates the research and artwork that has evolved from this Arctic adventure and aims to inspire the reader to actively engage in the pressing realities of climate change." -- p. [4] of cove