Wild & Scenic Arts and Lectures: David Abram and Terry Tempest Williams

SYRCL is excited to announce two Wild & Scenic Arts and Lectures leading up to the 11^th Annual Wild & Scenic Film Festival.  Wild & Scenic Arts and Lectures brings in some of the most interesting thinkers of our time to offer vision and clarity to our understanding of how to live on earth in a just and sustainable way.  On November 8^th we are partnering with The Center for the Arts to bring cultural ecologist, geo-philosopher and author David Abram.  On December 6^th we are partnering with Hospitality House and Finding the Good to bring conservationist, writer and activist Terry Tempest Williams.  We hope you will join us for one of these engaging evenings.

SYRCL’s Wild & Scenic Arts and Lectures and The Center for the Arts present David Abram for an engaging evening of discussion and readings from his books. David Abram is a philosopher, cultural ecologist, sleight of hand magician, and performance artist, best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues. He is the author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, for which he received, among other awards, the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction. Abram is founder and creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics ; his essays on the cultural causes and consequences of ecological disarray have appeared often in such journals as Orion, Environmental Ethics, Parabola, Tikkun, and The Ecologist, as well as in numerous anthologies. The evening will also include the premiere performance of a short play, World Fire Wake, by author and poet Dale Pendell. Pendell explains that many cultures have myths of the World Fire – that the world has burned before. Through the play, the author provides an opportunity for “old gods to speak on global warming and human addiction to speed and growth”. Mesmerhythm will provide accompaniment with Arthur Gould on the electric cello, joined by Jim Rodney on the electric guitar and synthesizer and Robert Trice on the harmonica.

Tickets on sale at The Center for the Arts & Briar Patch Co-op.  $20 general, $18 SYRCL/Center for the Arts members, $10 students

“I cannot imagine another book that so gently and so persuasively alters how we look at ourselves.” – Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle

SYRCL’s Wild & Scenic Arts and Lectures, Hospitality House, and Finding the Good Traveling Semester host an evening with author, conservationist and activist Terry Tempest Williams on Thursday, December 6^th at 7pm at the Don Baggett Theater.

Terry Tempest Williams has been called “a citizen writer,” a writer who writes and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. “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, like her writing, cannot be categorized. She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues, been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as “a barefoot artist” in Rwanda. Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books. She is a columnist for the magazine The Progressive.

Terry Tempest Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. 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. Her most recent book, When Women Were Birds, was published in Spring 2012, and will be available at the event, which will be followed by a book signing.

Tickets go on sale November 1st at www.wildandscenicfilmfestival.org  Ticket prices: $45 general/$40 SYRCL members  |  $80 includes event, hors d’oeuvres, and intimate reception with Ms. Williams (limited number available) |  $18 student (limited number available).