Oct. 26, 1998
Contact: Nancy Hurrelbrinck
 (804) 924-3274


NATURE WRITER TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS TO GIVE TALKS NOV. 1 AND 2

	Author and wilderness activist Terry Tempest Williams, will
visit the University of Virginia's Brown College Nov. 1-6.
	Williams is best known for her 1991 book, Refuge: An Unnatural
History of Family and Place, which intertwines two concurrent stories:
one about how the Great Salt Lake rose to record levels, flooding
migratory bird refuges, and the other about her motherÕs struggle
with cancer, possibly caused by exposure to nuclear tests while
traveling in the Southwest.
	During her visit to the residential college, Williams will meet
with students informally and in classes, as well as give two talks, both
free and open to the public:
¥ ÒSense of Place: Preserving Our Natural Landscape,Ó at Ivy
Creek Natural Area, Nov. 1 at  2 p.m. 
¥ "Waters from the Desert: Sense of Place, Sense of PeaceÓ
(reading and signing), at the U.Va. Bookstore, Nov. 2 at 8 p.m.
	Williams has written several other books, including Pieces of
White Shell--A Journey to Navajoland (1984), Coyote's Canyon (1989), An
Unspoken Hunger--Stories from the Field (1994) and most recently, Desert
Quartet: An Erotic Landscape (1996).
	Williams has said that she writes "through my biases of gender,
geography, and culture, that I am a woman whose ideas have been shaped
by the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin, that these ideas are then
filtered through the prism of my culture -- and my culture is Mormon.
Those tenets of family and community that I see at the heart of that
culture are then articulated through story."
	She was named one of 100 leading ÒvisionariesÓ by the Utne
Reader in 1995, and Newsweek described her as someone who will have
Òa considerable impact on the political, economic and environmental
issues facing the Western states in this decade.Ó She has received a
Lannan Literary Fellowship in creative nonfiction, along with a
Guggenheim Fellowship for 1997. She has served as
naturalist-in-residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History and is
currently the Shirley Sutton Thomas Visiting Professor of English at the
University of Utah.
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