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Author, Conservationist Terry Tempest Williams to Speak at W&L

Author Terry Tempest Williams, an environmental conservationist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, will give a reading with commentary at Washington and Lee University on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 7 p.m. in Lee Chapel. It is free and open to the public.

The reading will be immediately followed by an audience Q&A with a book signing.

Williams is the author six books, one of which was co-authored, three poetry collections and  four essay collections including the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Also An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and The Illuminated Desert (for children), among others.

Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, its highest honor given to an American citizen.  She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction.

Williams’ writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, among others, and numerous anthologies worldwide as an impassioned voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.

Williams will be meeting with several classes who have been studying her work including classes in environmental studies, American literature and first-year writing.

Williams’ visit to W&L is sponsored by the Glasgow Endowment, Environmental Studies and the Class of 1963 Scholar-in-Residence Fund.  The Class of 1963 Scholar-in-Residence Fund is used to bring speakers and artists to campus for extended visits which include both a public event and meetings with students.

News Contact:
Julie Cline
News Writer
jcline@wlu.edu
540-458-8954