How do we find beauty in a broken world? Who better to explore this question than Terry Tempest Williams. Hailed as a visionary by the Utne Reader, Williams is a naturalist and writer dedicated to expanding the intersections of environmentalism, feminism, and creative nonfiction. From her lyrical memoir, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1992)—a recounting of the concurrent tragedies of her mother’s death from cancer and the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary—to her appearances in Congress and at the White House advocating for women’s health and for the environment, Williams has defied convention and categorization to advocate for causes that matter.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and the Wallace Stegner Award from the Center for the American West, Terry Tempest Williams is the author and editor of fifteen books, and a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and dozens of anthologies and museum catalogs. She currently serves as the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.

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Photo credit: Cheryl Himmelstein