20 women writing about the outdoors

17. Terry Tempest Williams

Oftentimes, writers who create work about nature and the outdoors cannot help but become involved in activism. After all, we do not yet live in a utopia of sorts where everyone is living in harmony with all of the plants and animals. Instead, many are perhaps more prone to cutting down trees, draining swamps, and sometimes overhunting said animals.

Those issues of conservation and activism can also connect authors to other issues. Women’s rights and women’s health, for instance, have proven equally important to many. These include Terry Tempest Williams.

But first, a little backstory on Williams. She was born in California but grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her family’s Mormon faith and the adult Williams’ complicated relationship with Mormonism eventually became part of her work as well.

Between 1951 and 1962, atomic bomb testing at the Nevada Test Site (just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada) exposed several members of Williams’ family to nuclear radiation. People living in the southern portion of Utah were especially affected by the radiation.

The legacy of family illness

Williams believes that several members of her own family were struck ill by the testing. Her mother, brother, and grandmother all died from cancer, making a total of seven family deaths from cancer. Nine different family members underwent mastectomies as well.

As Williams grew older, married, and began teaching, environmentalism became increasingly important to her. She published numerous books beginning in 1984, with the children’s book The Secret Language of Snow, which focuses on the environment of the Arctic and the Inuit people living there.

However, her 1991 memoir, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, is probably one of her best-known works. It combines a close look at the natural environment of the West with a condemnation of the government-led nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. She also discusses the impact of both of these factors on her family, especially in the much-quoted final chapter, “The Clan of One-Breasted Women.”