A Burning Testament

by Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Frank (Illustrator)

A Burning Testament presents text by the writer and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams with illustrations by the artist Mary Frank. It is the newest and most urgent in a long line of collaborations between these two brilliant artists. A Burning Testament is a passionate plea and a manifesto in defense of the earth, and specifically Williams’s American West, written in the midst of the unprecedented, deadly, and widespread fires of this past fall. Williams’s text inspired an outpouring of resonant images from Mary Frank, which are brought together in this modest format – something like a secular prayer book from the cathedral of nature.

A portion of this text appeared in a special episode of The Daily, a New York Times podcast, on September 18, 2020, hosted and produced by Bianca Giaever.

“Let this be a humble tribute, an exaltation, an homage, and an open-hearted eulogy to all we are losing to fire, to floods, to hurricanes and tornadoes and the invisible virus that has called us all home and brought us to our knees. We are not the only species that lives and loves and breathes on this miraculous planet called Earth.” –Terry Tempest Williams

Genres: Nonfiction

16 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2020

About the author

Terry Tempest Williams is an American author, conservationist and activist. Williams’ writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of her native Utah in which she was raised. Her work ranges from issues of ecology and wilderness preservation, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature.

She has testified before Congress on women’s health, committed acts of civil disobedience in the years 1987 - 1992 in protest against nuclear testing in the Nevada Desert, and again, in March, 2003 in Washington, D.C., with Code Pink, against the Iraq War. She has been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of the Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.

Williams is the author of 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.

In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfictionand a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009). In 2011, she received the 18th International Peace Award given by the Community of Christ Church.

Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah and a columnist for the magazine The Progressive. She has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College where she continues to teach. She divides her time between Wilson, Wyoming and Castle Valley, Utah, where her husband Brooke is field coordinator for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always enjoy Terry Tempest Williams' words but the illustrations were a distraction for me. Wanted to love it!