2016 Presentation: Terry Tempest Williams

She is a professor, activist, poet and author. But more than anything, Terry Tempest Williams is a writer who gives eloquent voice to the West, to the crucial power of wildness and to the connection of our inner and outer landscapes. The Utah native, who grew up in the Salt Lake Valley, has spent her career penning words that speak to morality and preservation, to gratitude and awe, to the striking beauty of a bird in flight and the importance of finding home. She has been a guest at the White House, a barefoot artist in Rwanda, a contributor to Orion and The New Yorker, and the author of books that include When Women Were Birds, Finding Beauty in a Broken Word and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. To honor the centennial of America’s National Parks System — which have historically offered a taste of nature in a world where wild places are vanishing steadily — Tempest Williams has written a new book, The Hour of Land. In it, she delves into the complexities of our national parks in both shadow and light. She asks the essential questions about what national parks mean to us and what we mean to them — getting to the heart of why wild lands are essential to our very humanity.