Terry Tempest Williams in conversation with Brenda Miller- The Glorians

“With The Glorians, Terry Tempest Williams has secured her place as one of our greatest living eco-visionaries. This book is the culmination and crescendo of the devotional work of a lifetime—deeply wise, poetic, necessary, brave, transporting, and transcendent.”—V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues

"Williams is Whitmanesque in her vision: generous, visionary, multitudinous. This is a wise, tender, and often very funny book that asks us to achieve new ways of seeing. A glorian is a revelation made flesh and rock and fire and desire. Give me a Terry Tempest Williams world any day: it lights up the very edges of the dark.”—Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin

In this time of political fragility, climate chaos, and seeking hope wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world. The Glorians can be as small as an ant ferrying a coyote willow blossom to its queen or as commonplace as the night sky. But what they can collectively teach us—about the radical act of attending to beauty and carrying forward against all odds—is immense.

Journeying through encounters with the Glorians in the red rock desert of Utah during the pandemic to Harvard University where she teaches in the Divinity School, Williams weaves a story of astonishing personal and societal insight. As she grapples with the unsettled state of the world, she turns not to despair but to deep reflection. She sees how the Glorians are calling us all to attention, not as an army, but as fellow inhabitants of our sacred, threatened home. They remind us of the power of contact between species and the profound courage—and awareness—it will take to dream a more cohesive future into being.

Wise and lyrical, The Glorians is a testament to the power of witness, a field guide to finding grace in the unexpected, and a moving invitation to engage with one another and our surroundings with renewed intention. In a modern world filled with increasing noise and anxiety, Terry Tempest Williams offers honest sustenance for the mind and spirit and distinguishes herself again as a trusted voice to whom we can turn to more fully understand our times.

Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of seventeen books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Among her other books are Leap; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; The Hour of Land – A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; and Erosion – Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and is currently the writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Castle Valley, Utah.

Williams will be in conversation with:

Brenda Miller is the author of six essay collections and the poetry chapbook The Daughters of Elderly Women. Her work has received seven Pushcart prizes. She co-authored the textbook Tell it Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, and The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World. She is Professor Emerita of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.

Note: Terry Tempest Williams will only be pre-signing books purchased in the Book/Reservation bundle for this event.

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