A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams

Abstract

Terry Tempest Williams is a conservationist, advocate for free speech, and the author of several books, poetry collections, and essay collections. With a career spanning over forty years, Williams has often been called a “citizen writer” who consistently illuminates how environmental issues are social issues, and ultimately how these issues transform into matters of justice. Her books include Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family & Place, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice and Williams’ most recent work, The Moon is Behind Us. Williams has received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, the Spirit of the Arctic Award, an International Peace Award, and a Robert Kirsch Award among many other accolades for her writing and activism. She is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. During this program, Terry Tempest Williams read from her work and gave a brief talk on her writing and its relationship to our current times, following which she participated in a moderated onstage conversation