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"The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks" with Terry Tempest Williams

"The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks" with Terry Tempest Williams In-Person

The Boulder Public Library Speaker Series & Boulder Book Store present
The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks
with author Terry Tempest Williams


For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing. Join acclaimed author Terry Tempest Williams as she honors the centennial of the National Park Service with a literary celebration of our national parks, what they mean to us, and what we mean to them. Program will conclude with an audience Q&A followed by a book signing in the Canyon Gallery with books for sale courtesy of Boulder Book Store.

$10 General Admission (includes a $5 voucher towards the purchase of a book at the event)
Tickets can be purchased in person at the Main Library and the Boulder Bookstore or by calling 303.447.2074. A portion of the proceeds supports the Boulder Public Library.

 

Date:
Friday, Jul 29 2016
Time:
7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location:
Canyon Theater, Main Library

Categories:
  Performances & Presentations     Author Talks  

Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. "So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?"

Williams, like her writing, cannot be categorized. She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues, been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.

Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books. She is a columnist for the magazine The Progressive. Her new book is The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries, as rediscovered by Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams (Torrey House Press), in which she and Brooke Williams expand upon the 1883 book by Richard Jeffries. Williams is also currently working on a new book titled The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The book will be published in June, 2016 to honor the centennial of the National Park Service.

In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their 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. In 2009, Terry Tempest Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series on the national parks. She is also the recipient of the 2010 David R. Brower Conservation Award for activism. The Community of Christ International Peace Award was presented in 2011 to Terry Tempest Williams in recognition of significant peacemaking vision, advocacy and action. In 2014, on the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Ms. Williams received the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award honoring a distinguished record of leadership in American conservation.

Terry Tempest Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She and her husband, Brooke Williams, divide their time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Made possible through a partnership with the Boulder Book Store and through the generous support of the Boulder Library Foundation.