Terry Tempest Williams was born on September 8, 1955 in Corona, California, to Diane Dixon Tempest and John Henry Tempest, III. Her father was serving in the United States Air Force in Riverside, California, for two years.

Atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site (outside Las Vegas) between 1951 and 1962 exposed Williams’ family to radiation like many Utahns, which Williams believes is the reason so many members of her family have been affected by cancer. By 1994, nine members of the Tempest family had had mastectomies, and seven had died of cancer. Some of the family members affected by cancer included Williams’ own mother and grandmother and brother.

In 1978, Williams graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in English and a minor in biology, followed by a Master of Science degree in environmental education in 1984. Williams met her husband, Brooke Williams, in 1974 while working part-time at Zion's Bookstore, a Salt Lake City bookstore, where he was a customer. The two married six months after their first meeting and began their life working together at the Teton Science School in Grand Teton National Park. After graduating from college, Williams worked as a teacher on a Navajo Reservation in Montezuma Creek, Utah. Williams has also worked at the Utah Museum of Natural History, first as curator of education and later as naturalist-in-residence.

In 1984, Williams published her first book, The Secret Language of Snow, with her mentor at the Teton Science School, Ted Major. It is a children's book illustrated by Jennifer Dewey, published by Sierra Club Books/Pantheon. It was honored with a National Science Book Award. Over the next few years, Williams published three other books: Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajo Land (Charles Scribners Sons, 1984, illustrated by Clifford Brycelea, a Navajo artist), Between Cattails (Little, Brown, 1985, illustrated by Peter Parnall), and Coyote’s Canyon, (Peregrine Smith, 1989, with photographs by John Telford).

In 1991, Terry Tempest Williams' memoir, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place was published by Pantheon Books to national acclaim. The book interweaves memoir and natural history, recounting her mother's diagnosis with ovarian cancer along with the concurrent flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, a place special to Williams since childhood. The book's epilogue, The Clan of One-Breasted Women, explores whether the high incidence of cancer in her family might be due to their status as downwinders during the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and 60s. This essay has been published worldwide. This book received the 1991 Evans Biography Award from the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies at Utah State University.

In 1995, when Utah wilderness was under siege in the United States Congress, Williams and writer Stephen Trimble edited the powerful collection, Testimony: Writers Speak On Behalf of Utah Wilderness, a landmark effort by twenty American writers written to sway public policy. A copy of this chapbook of essays about the significance of Utah wilderness was placed on the desk of every member of the United State Congress. On September 18, 1996, President Bill Clinton at the dedication of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, held up this book and said, "This made a difference."

Among her other books are Pieces of White Shell (1984), An Unspoken Hunger(1994), Leap (2000), Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert (2001), and The Open Space of Democracy (2004), and Finding Beauty in a Broken World, (2008).

Williams has also collaborated with many photographers in the creation of fine art books. Among the photographers she has worked with: Emmet Gowin; Richard Misrach; Debra Bloomfield; Meridel Rubenstein, Rosalie Winard; and Edward Riddell.

She has also been published in numerous anthologies pertaining to environmental, feminist, political, and literary anthologies.

Terry Tempest Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.She has also been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College where she continues to teach. An acclaimed lecturer on college and university campuses, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She and her husband, Brooke Williams, divide their time between Castle Valley, Utah and Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Terry Tempest Williams

Conservationist, Advocate for Free Speech,Author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family & Placeand Finding Beauty in a Broken World

List of Written Works

Books

• The Secret Language of Snow (for children; co-authored with Ted Major), 1984.
• Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1984.
• Between Cattails, Little, Brown, Boston, 1985.
• Coyote's Canyon, Peregrine Smith, Layton, Utah, 1989.
• Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Pantheon Books, New York, 1991, ISBN 0-679-74024-4.
• Leap,Pantheon Books, New York, 2000.
• The Illuminated Desert’’, Canyonlands Natural History Association, Moab, Utah, 2008.
• Finding Beauty In A Broken World, Pantheon Books, New York, 2008.

Poetry Collections

• Between Cattails (for children), Little, Brown, Boston, 1985.
• Earthly Messengers, Western Slope Press, Provo, Utah, 1989.

Essay Collections

• An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, Pantheon Books, New York, 1994.
• Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape, Pantheon Books, New York, 1995.
• Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, Pantheon Books, New York, 2001.
• The Open Space of Democracy, Orion Society Books, Great Barrington, Mass, 2004.

Works Edited by Terry Tempest Williams

• Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Centennial Reader(edited with Thomas J. Lyon), Peregrine Smith, Layton, Utah 1995.
• Testimony: Writers in Defense of the Wilderness(compiled with Stephen Trimble), Milkweed Press, Minneapolis, 1996.
• New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community(edited with William B. Smart, and Gibbs M. Smith), Peregrine Smith, Layton, Utah 1998.

• Governing Council of The Wilderness Society 1989 - 1993
• President's Council for Sustainable Development, western team member 1994 - 1995
• National Parks and Conservation Association, advisory board member
• Round River Conservation Studies, board member
• The Nature Conservancy - Utah Chapter
• Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance 1985—present

• Advocate for America's Redrock Wilderness Act currently before U.S. Congress
• Naturalist-in-Resident at the Utah Museum of Natural History 1986 - 1996
• Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities Program at the University of Utah, 2004 to present

• Honorary Degree, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, 1999
• Honorary Degree, Chatham College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2000
• Honorary Doctor of Humanities, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 2002
• Honorary Doctor of Humanities, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2003
• Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, 2004
• Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Lesley University, Cambridge, Mass, 2008
• Honorary Doctor of Humanities, Wooster College, Wooster, Ohio, 2010

• National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Award for Special Achievement, 1993
• Wallace Stegner Award for the Center for the American West, 2005
• Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association, 2006
• Inducted into the Rachel Carson Honor Roll
• John Wesley Powell Award, The Grand Canyon Trust, 2008
• Spirit of the Arctic Award, Alaska Wilderness League, 2008

• One of the "Utne Reader's" "Utne 100 Visionaries"

• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow
• Lannan Literary Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction
• Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Community Literary Grant
• The Mormon Arts & Letters Association Award
• Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, 2006