Environmental writers Terry Tempest Williams and Brooke Williams will read from and discuss their work at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, in the WSU Compton Union Building 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.”