![]() ![]() Terry Tempest Williams is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School. Nevertheless in an April 25, 2016, letter to the University's associate vice president for faculty she wrote: "My fear is that universities, now under increased pressure to raise money, are being led by corporate managers rather than innovative educators." Williams resigned from the University of Utah in late April 2016, after six weeks of contract negotiations she described as "humiliating". The University denied that the contract issue was related to the oil and gas lease or Williams' other activism. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the Williams' "gesture. In February 2016, the University approached Williams about contract revisions days after she and her husband successfully bid on a 1,120 acre oil and gas lease to protest federal energy policies in environmentally sensitive areas of Utah. That year she also co-founded the University's acclaimed Environmental Humanities master's degree program, where she taught for thirteen years and was the Annie Clark Tanner Teaching Fellow. ![]() In 2003, the University of Utah awarded Williams an honorary doctorate. Williams was featured Stephen Ives's PBS documentary series The West (1996) and in Ken Burns' PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009). She has been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of the Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda. Williams has testified before Congress on women's health, committed acts of civil disobedience in the years 1987–1992 in protest against nuclear testing in the Nevada Desert, and again, in March 2003 in Washington, D.C., with Code Pink, against the Iraq War. She worked at the Utah Museum of Natural History from 1986–96, first as curator of education and later as naturalist-in-residence. After graduating from college, Williams worked as a teacher in Montezuma Creek, Utah, on the Navajo Reservation. In 1978, Williams graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in English and a minor in biology, followed by a Master of Science degree in environmental education in 1984. ![]() "The challenge was to impart large ecological concepts to young burgeoning minds in a language that wasn't polemical, but woven into a compelling story." "Teaching helped me find my voice," she later wrote. She often clashed with the conservative couple that led the school over her unorthodox teaching methods and environmental politics, but she respected their gift of teaching through storytelling and prized her five years there. In 1976 Williams was hired to teach science at Carden School of Salt Lake City (since renamed Carden Memorial School). The two married six months after their first meeting and began their life together working at the Teton Science School in Grand Teton National Park. Williams met her husband Brooke Williams in 1974 while working part-time at a Salt Lake City bookstore, where he was a customer. Some of the family members affected by cancer included Williams' own mother, grandmother, and brother. By 1994, nine members of the Tempest family had had mastectomies, and seven had died of cancer. She grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, within sight of Great Salt Lake.Ītomic testing at the Nevada Test Site (outside Las Vegas) between 19 exposed Williams' family to radiation like many Utahns (especially those living in the southern part of the state), which Williams believes is the reason so many members of her family have been affected by cancer. Her father served in the United States Air Force in Riverside, California, for two years. Terry Tempest Williams was born in Corona, California, to Diane Dixon Tempest and John Henry Tempest, III. She writes in the genre of creative nonfiction and the lyrical essay. Her work focuses on social and environmental justice ranging from issues of ecology and the protection of public lands and wildness, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature. Williams' writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of Utah. Terry Tempest Williams (born 8 September 1955), is an American writer, educator, conservationist, and activist. degree in English with a minor in biology ![]()
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