Terry Tempest Williams has been called “a citizen writer,” a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, Williams has consistently shown how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues, been a guest at the White House, camped in remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses, and worked as “a barefoot artist” in Rwanda. Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of environmental literature classics including Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, The Open Space of Democracy, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, Erosion: Essays of Undoing, and The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks. Her new book is The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (Grove Atlantic, March 3, 2026), which Kirkus calls “An impassioned defense of interconnectedness.” Williams has received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award honoring a distinguished record of leadership in American conservation, the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and the Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing. She is an Emerson Collective Fellow for 2025-26 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Williams co-founded the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Graduate Program in 2004, served as Provostial Scholar at Dartmouth College, and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She is co-founder of the Constellation Project, which seeks to create a community of practice promoting the importance of imagination, creativity, and spirituality in Planetary Health. She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Why their voice matters: Williams demonstrates that environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice, asking the profound question of whether power can be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species and showing that to deny our genealogy with the earth is to commit treason against our souls. By consistently speaking out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life—from testifying before Congress on women’s health to camping in remote wildernesses to working as a barefoot artist in Rwanda—Williams proves that being a “citizen writer” demands engagement with the full spectrum of human and ecological experience rather than remaining safely within literary boundaries. Her impassioned and lyrical prose in classics like Refuge, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and When Women Were Birds reveals that the land is the absolute essential bedrock of our lives and the source of where all our power lies, while her newest work The Glorians offers an impassioned defense of interconnectedness showing that imagination, creativity, and spirituality are essential to Planetary Health in an age demanding we see beyond our own time.
