Finding Voice For Authentic Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams

Program Description

Terry takes us on a whirlwind tour of what it means to give voice to our own authenticity. It requires deep listening and fertile silences. She encourages us to speak “Mother Tongue.” That is speaking from the belly rather than the mind. She laments that in Western culture, “the language of economics has power, the language of the law has power, the language of science has power. But an intelligence of the heart, an emotional intelligence, or a poetic sensibility, or even a sensibility that comes from the side, from a different angle, from a different point of view, asks us to form a different kind of shape of conversation.” In this delightfully warm and thoughtful program you’ll by dazzled by the mystery of Terry’s dying mother request for her to read her journals, but not until after her death. Terry found 3 shelves of journals only to discover all of them were blank. Puzzle along with Terry as she takes us from the Red Rock Wildlands of Utah to the Plains of Kenya in a far-reaching dialogue about finding one’s authentic voice. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Terry Tempest Williams is a naturalist, environmentalist, and award-winning author. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship in creative nonfiction and the 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship, and served as naturalist-in-residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Her books include Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Pantheon 1991), Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert (Vintage Books 2002), Leap (Vintage 2001), An Unspoken Hunger (Vintage 1995), Finding Beauty in a Broken World (Pantheon 2008), and When Women Were Birds (Sarah Crichton Books: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2012). She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Moose, Wyoming. To learn more about the work of Terry Tempest Williams go to www.terrytempestwilliams.com.

Topics explored in the dialogue include:

• How did the mystery of her mother’s journals inspire Terry
• How Terry became a better teacher in a surprising way
• How do we speak a language that opens our hearts rather than closes them
• What is the profound distinction between silence and being silenced
• What is meant by “The Mother Tongue”
• How can the question “who benefits?” help us decide which voices gets our attention
• Why the conversation on reproductive freedom is important
• Who was Wangari Maathai and what was her contribution to the world

Program Number: 3437  Hosted by: Justine Willis Toms  Interview Date: 5/5/12