PULLMAN, Wash. – Environmental writers Terry Tempest Williams and Brooke Williams will read from and discuss their work at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, in the Washington State University CUB auditorium as part of the free, public Department of English Visiting Writer Series.
Their latest joint project, “The Story of My Heart: As Rediscovered by Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams,” couples the autobiography of 19th-century British nature writer Richard Jefferies with their personal essays about nature.
Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of 14 books, including “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.” In it, her astute observations of relationships in both the natural and human worlds are conveyed using the Great Salt Lake and nearby Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge as metaphors for her relationships with her mother and grandmother.
“All of Terry Tempest Williams’s work is important, but ‘Refuge’ has touched so many people’s lives,” said Debbie Lee, co-director of the Visiting Writer Series. “She comes into a community and engages it and, as a result, the community is changed. She teaches about how, in small and practical ways, we can work to make our world for the better.”
Terry Tempest Williams is the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. Her honors include the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association, Wallace Stegner Award from the Center for the American West, Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction, Robert Marshall Award from the Wilderness Society and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction.
Brooke Williams has published four books and has worked more than 30 years as a wilderness advocate with groups like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Murie Center.
This first event in the 2015-16 Visiting Writer Series is cosponsored by the WSU Common Reading Program, Charles R. Connor Museum of Natural History, College of Arts and Sciences, Columbia Chair in the History of the American West, Department of History, Center for Environmental Research, Education and Outreach (CEREO) and the Department of English at the University of Idaho. A common reading stamp for students is available for this event.
On Nov. 12, the series will feature poets and editors Stephanie Lenox and Heather K. Hummel, who also will run a one-credit, weeklong editing and publishing workshop open to WSU students of all majors.
Learn more about the Visiting Writer Series at WSU at http://libarts.wsu.edu/english/visitingwriterseries.html.
Contacts:
Debbie Lee, WSU Department of English (http://libarts.wsu.edu/english/), 509-335-6812, deblee@wsu.edu
Adrian Aumen, WSU College of Arts and Sciences (http://dev.cas.wsu.edu/index_rotate.html) communications, 509-335-5671, adriana@wsu.edu