Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer, educator, conservationist, and activist whose work is rooted in the American West and shaped by the arid landscape of Utah. Her writing takes up environmental and social justice, from the protection of public lands and wildness to women's health and the place of humanity within nature and culture. Williams works mainly in creative nonfiction and the lyrical essay, as in Refuge, which sets the flooding of a Utah bird refuge beside the illness of her mother, and When Women Were Birds.
