Terry Tempest Williams Brings “The Glorians” to the Huntington

Terry Tempest Williams has spent four decades writing about the American West with a poet’s musicality and an activist’s urgency, and on Thursday evening she sits down at the Huntington with President Karen R. Lawrence for a conversation that picks up where her newest book, “The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary,” leaves off. The exchange will explore how to find beauty and imagine renewal amid environmental and civic erosion, and how the country’s relationship to nature has shaped a national history that must now be defended.

Williams, who is currently writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School, has authored more than 20 books that have been translated worldwide, including “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place,” “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” “When Women Were Birds,” and “The Open Space of Democracy.” She is a recipient of Guggenheim and Lannan literary fellowships, and the London Review of Books has placed her alongside Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey as a chronicler of the American West.

“The Glorians,” published in March by Grove Atlantic, takes its title from a dream and its method from a long career of attention. The book offers what Williams describes as a testament to the power of witness and an invitation to engage more deeply with one another and the living world.

Limited quantities of pre-signed copies of “The Open Space of Democracy” (2004) and “The Glorians” (2026) will be available for purchase in Rothenberg Hall 30 minutes before the program (6:30-7 p.m.) and 30 minutes after it ends (8-8:30 p.m.).

Terry Tempest Williams in conversation with Karen R. Lawrence will run on Thursday, May 14 at 7 p.m. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. For more information, call (626) 405-2100 or visit huntington.org. Tickets available online.