Terry Tempest Williams: Keynote lecture on Rachel Carson

Yale Library is honored to welcome Terry Tempest Williams for this talk in connection with the exhibition "Silent Springs, Windswept Seas: Rachel Carson’s Environmental Vision,” on view at Beinecke Library through Oct. 4. Please join us for an engaging evening on the enduring significance of Rachel Carson, whose book "Silent Spring" sparked the modern environmental movement. Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," who speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, Williams consistently shows us that environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. She is a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. "So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like--and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?" Williams has served as the Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, which she co-founded in 2004. She was the Provostial Scholar at Dartmouth College, serving as a Montgomery Fellow twice, and was also writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She is co-founder of the Constellation Project, which seeks to create a community of practice to promote the importance of imagination, creativity, and spirituality in Planetary Health. She was featured as interviewee and commentator in Ken Burns‘s PBS series “The National Parks: America‘s Best Idea.” Williams is the author of numerous books, including “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”; “An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field”; “Desert Quartet”; “Leap”; “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”; “The Hour of Land: A Personal Typography of America‘s National Parks”; and “The Story of My Heart,” by Richard Jeffries, as rediscovered by Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams. She has collaborated with photographer Fazal Sheikh on “The Moon Is Behind Us” and “Thirst, Great Salt Lake” and with artist Mary Frank on “Trilogy” (whose volumes are titled “A Burning Testament,” “What My Body Knows,” and ”We Are Not Alone”). Williams’s most recent book is “The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary,” which “Kirkus Reviews” has called “an impassioned defense of interconnectedness.” Her writing has also appeared in "The New Yorker," the "New York Times," "Orion" magazine, "The Progressive," and anthologies worldwide. This event is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Please arrive early as the auditorium has limited seating capacity. Doors will open at 5 p.m.