First Annual Central Wasatch Symposium
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS TO PROVIDE KEYNOTE ADDRESS DURING THE INAUGURAL CENTRAL WASATCH SYMPOSIUM, HOSTED BY THE CENTRAL WASATCH COMMISSION, JANUARY 9TH AND 10TH, 2025
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Wednesday, October 2, 2024, The Central Wasatch Commission will host the Central Wasatch Symposium, a conference-style event that will bring together the various interests and stakeholders in the Central Wasatch for two days of expert panels, interactive workshops, and networking to take place on January 9th and 10th, 2025 at Millcreek City Hall.
During the Symposium, the CWC will be engaging the CWC’s Board of Commissioners, Stakeholders Council, Youth Council, partner agencies, and the public for presentations from leaders and experts working in each of the four interdependent systems of the Central Wasatch that the CWC focuses on – economy (world-renowned ski resorts as well as small businesses), transportation (how people travel to and around the Central Wasatch), recreation (year-round biking, hiking, skiing, climbing, picnicking and other recreational opportunities in the Central Wasatch), and environment (the land, water, air, vegetation communities, and wildlife that underpin the other three systems) of the Central Wasatch.
“The Central Wasatch Symposium will be an opportunity for the public to engage in all the work of the Central Wasatch Commission over the course of two days.” Central Wasatch Commission Chair and Mayor of Millcreek, Jeff Silvestrini said, “It will spotlight the interdependence of the four systems of the Central Wasatch while bringing stakeholders and the public together for learning and networking. The Commission is especially pleased to announce Terry Tempest Williams, a writer and poet with a specific connection to the Central Wasatch Mountains, will provide the keynote address during this first annual event.”
Terry Tempest Williams, award-winning author and environmentalist will provide the keynote address to Symposium attendees speaking on the unique qualities of the Central Wasatch Mountains, and her personal tie to the Central Wasatch. Following the keynote address, lunch will be provided, and the remainder of the day will consist of breakout sessions. There will also be a tabling expo during the lunch hour.
Symposium day-two picks back up on January 10th, 2025, with a panel discussion with Central Wasatch Commission Commissioners from across the Central Wasatch Front and Back. The day will continue with more breakout sessions, a tabling expo in the middle of the afternoon, and will conclude with the opportunity to network with Symposium attendees and speakers.
Central Wasatch Symposium presenters will include the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation, the General Managers of each of the Cottonwood Canyon ski resorts, Save Our Canyons, Sageland Collaborative, former US Congressman and former Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, former Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, and more.
A Standard Entry ticket includes attendance for both days of the event and costs $50, plus a $25 tabling fee if your organization would like to table during the tabling expo. Discounted admission may be available upon request. To register for the Symposium, and for more information, follow this link: https://cwc.utah.gov/central-
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Terry Tempest Williams has been called a citizen writer, a writer who speaks 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 classics Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; Erosion: Essays of Undoing; The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; and The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries, as rediscovered by Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams. She has collaborated with photographer Fazal Sheikh on The Moon Is Behind Us, with artist Mary Frank on A Burning Testament, and What My Body Knows, and she wrote the introductory essay for A Wild Promise by Allen Crawford. In 2024 she wrote text to accompany woodblock prints by Gaylord Schanilec for the fine press book Oracle Bones (Red Butte Press).
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 Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. In 2009, Terry Tempest Williams was featured in Ken Burns PBS series on the national parks. In 2014, on the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Ms. Williams received the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award honoring a distinguished record of leadership in American conservation. Williams also received the 2017 Audubon New York Award for Environmental Writing. In 2019 Terry Tempest Williams was given The Robert Kirsch Award, a lifetime achievement prize given to a writer with a substantial connection to the American West and was also elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2023 she received The Thoreau Prize given by the Thoreau Society.
Terry Tempest Williams has served as the Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Graduate Program which she co-founded in 2004; and was the Provostial Scholar at Dartmouth College, serving as a Montgomery Fellow twice. Williams is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She is co-founder of the Constellation Project which seeks to create a community of practice to promote the importance of imagination, creativity, and spirituality in Planetary Health. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, The Progressive, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.