Research Guides: Aldo Leopold Distinguished Lectures @ UNI: Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams is the author of numerous books on topics ranging from the National Parks, women’s health, and democracy. Winner of The Community of Christ International Peace Award, the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award, to name two of her many honors, Williams's work demonstrates how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. She will be visiting us on Friday, April 19, 2019, meeting with students before giving a talk that evening.

Speaker Series Events

As events are added and updated, we'll add calendar links here:

Tending Iowa's Land - An Evening of Discussion About Iowa's Lost Biodiversity
Friday, April 21
6:30pm
Aldo Leopold Distinguished Lectures

Events - Terry Tempest Williams

An Evening with Terry Tempest Williams

Friday, April 19, 2019 ~ Lang Hall Auditorium, 7:30 p.m. ~ Click here to save to your calendar

The Aldo Leopold Distinguished Lecture Series cordially invites all members of the campus community to participate in a Common Read experience this semester by discussing Terry Tempest Williams’ important collections of essays, The Open Space of Democracy. Please visit the registration page to select your group facilitator. The three essays included in The Open Space of Democracy are linked below.

Commencement by Terry Tempest Williams
This is the first essay in a three-part series published by Orion Magazine.
Ground Truthing by Terry Tempest Williams
This is the second essay in a three-part series.
Engagement by Terry Tempest Williams
This is the third essay in a three-part series.

Readings and Resources - Terry Tempest Williams

Selected books:

The Open Space of Democracy by Terry Tempest Williams; Mary Frank (Illustrator)
ISBN: 9781608992089
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Terry Tempest Williams presents a sharp-edged perspective on the ethics and politics of place, spiritual democracy, and the responsibilities of citizen engagement. By turns elegiac, inspiring, and passionate, The Open Space of Democracy offers a fresh perspective on the critical questions of our time.

Commencement by Terry Tempest Williams
This is the first essay in a three-part series published by Orion Magazine.
Ground Truthing by Terry Tempest Williams
This is the second essay in a three-part series.
Engagement by Terry Tempest Williams
This is the third essay in a three-part series.

The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams
Call Number: E160 .W54 2016
ISBN: 9781250132147
Publication Date: 2017-07-03
America's national parks are breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing. This is why more than 300 million people visit the parks each year. In The Hour of Land, Terry Tempest Williams, author of the environmental classic Refuge and the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, offers a gift of celebration: an exploration of our national parks, and what they mean to us and we mean to them. From the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas, Williams captures the unique grandeur of each place while unearthing what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and a manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America.* Now a nominee for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence* For readers of Peter Matthiessen, Barry Lopez, and Annie Dillard* Beautiful paperback repackage with flaps makes this a perfect gift
When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
ISBN: 9781250024114
Publication Date: 2013-02-26
NATIONAL BESTSELLER AKansas City Star Best Book of the Year "Brilliant, meditative, and full of surprises, wisdom, and wonder."--Ann Lamott, author ofImperfect Birds "I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won't look at them until after I'm gone." This is what Terry Tempest Williams's mother, the matriarch of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah, told her a week before she died. It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as it was to discover that the three shelves of journals were all blank. In fifty-four short chapters, Williams recounts memories of her mother, ponders herown faith, and contemplates the notion of absence and presence art and in our world.When Women Were Birds is a carefully crafted kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question: What does it mean to have a voice?

Reviews of Williams's Books:

‘The Hour of Land,’ by Terry Tempest Williams
Wulf, A. (June 1, 2016). ‘The Hour of Land,’ by Terry Tempest Williams. New York Times.
"Inspired by the National Park Service’s celebration of its centennial, the nature writer Terry Tempest Williams has taken a look at a dozen of its parks, emerging with a collection of essays that’s a personal journey as much as a meditation on the purpose and relevance of national parks in the 21st century. “The Hour of Land” isn’t a guidebook, taking readers through the nation’s most popular or most frequently visited parks — quite the opposite. Instead Williams embarks on an idiosyncratic journey through various landscapes (some empty, some crowded), delving, along the way, into the politics, activism, history and people that are also a crucial part of them."

Selected articles:

Fire on the Mountain
Williams, T. T. (2016). Fire on the Mountain. National Parks, 90(4), 30-35.
A dozen family members gathered in Glacier for a vacation and birthday celebration. The perfect storm of fire approached.
America's Evolving Idea
Williams, T. T. (2016). America's Evolving Idea. Sierra, 101(4), 31-63.
An essay is presented on the history of national parks during the Civil War on June 30, 1864 and the Mariposa Indian War from 1850-1851. The author discusses the Yosemite Land Grant signed into law by former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, which aimed at protecting and declaring the Yosemite Valley and the ancient giant sequoias of the Mariposa Grove as nature preserve.

Terry Tempest Williams leaving U.; critics say school prioritized paperwork over what she taught a generation of students in Utah's wild landscapes
Maffly, B. (May 5, 2016). Terry Tempest Williams leaving U.; critics say school prioritized paperwork over what she taught a generation of students in Utah's wild landscapes . The Salt Lake Tribune.
"Terry Tempest Williams is leaving her University of Utah teaching post and walking away from the Environmental Humanities program she founded rather than agree to administrators' demands she move her teaching from the state's desert landscapes onto campus. "For reasons I will never know or understand, the University of Utah wanted me gone — and in the end, what was most threatening was my teaching. Why? Because each of you and our current students are challenging the status quo, each in your own way with the gifts that are yours," the acclaimed author wrote in an email last week to about 80 current and past students of the U.'s Environmental Humanities graduate program."