The Merwin Conservancy to Welcome Writer & Environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams to The Green Room series at Maui Arts & Cultural Center

The Merwin Conservancy will host the next in a series of popular arts and ecology literary events known as The Green Room. An evening of inspiration and conversation with award-winning environmentalist, writer, and activist Terry Tempest Williams will take place on Maui at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center on December 12, starting at 7 PM. Tickets are on sale at mauiarts.org.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lannan Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction, and Henry David Thoreau Medal for natural history writing, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of more than twenty books. She is known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, including the environmental literature classic Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Her most recent book is Erosion: Essays of Undoing and her forthcoming book, The Glorians will be published in 2025. Williams is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She lives with her husband Brooke Williams in Castle Valley, Utah. Terry was a dear friend of Paula and William Merwin and mentored by both.

Terry Tempest Williams has been called “a citizen writer,” whose work passionately and eloquently addresses urgent social and environmental issues. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, Williams is a leading voice in environmental literature. Weaving together the social and spiritual, the personal and political, her exquisite and impassioned prose has addressed a range of topics including the essential role of National parks and wilderness on community well-being, the loss of public lands and the erosion of democracy, the impacts of human intervention—such as nuclear testing—on both humans and the environment, and the physical and spiritual impacts of climate disasters such as fires and flood. Her writing blends memoir, natural history, and social critique, meditating on the intersections of personal and environmental grief while calling us toward “the power of renewal.” Her writing invites us into different ways of seeing, thinking, and being in and with the world. “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 will be introduced by Hawaiʻi-based environmental social scientist Dr. Mehana Blaich Vaughan— author of Kaiāulu: Gathering Tides and founder of Kīpuka Kuleana—whose work focuses on restoring indigenous-led, community-based care and relationships to place.

During this time, Williams will be taking part in The Merwin Conservancy’s multidisciplinary residency program that invites writers and artists who make new possibilities for language and land across disciplines to live and work in W.S. Merwin’s house among the palms. Sonnet Coggins, the Executive Director of the Merwin Conservancy, says, “Terry Tempest Williams is a profound and essential voice for our times. In the days after the Maui fires, I turned to Terry’s words for grounding and perspective in the wake of the disaster. I have continued to hold with me her poignant call ‘not to look away from all that is breaking our hearts.’ More than ever, her powerful and poetic reflections on life, language, and land offer ways of thinking and feeling our way through the challenging realities of our moment.” Since 2021, the Conservancy has hosted eleven residents. Residencies have varied in length from two to four weeks, and have included ample time for reflection and immersion in the home and garden. 

Previous residents have included:

Natalie Diaz (December 2021), Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator
Sean Connelly (May 2022), Hawai‘i-based land artist and architect
Arthur Sze (July 2022), poet and translator
Carol Moldaw (July 2022), poet and author
Carrie Fountain (October 2022), poet and childrenʻs book author
Ada Limón (December 2022), the current U.S. Poet Laureate
Dr. Bill Baker (January 2023), botanist and palm scientist 
Leilehua Lanzilotti (April 2024), sound artist and composer
Elisa Gonzalez (June 2024), poet, essayist, and fiction writer
Michael Swaine and Archie Wessells (September 2024), artist and gardener of the collective Futurefarmers

Sonnet Coggins says “Our residency program honors those who make new possibilities for language and land. Terry Tempest Williams does just that. It is all the more meaningful to have her with us, given her deep and longstanding connection with William and Paula Merwin. We are so grateful to Terry for sharing her transformative voice with our community here on Maui through the Green Room series.”

The Green Room is a program of the Merwin Conservancy in its 11th year. Terry Tempest Williams Green Room program is generously supported by The Atherton Family Foundation, Lillian Ball, Sarah Cavanaugh, and Green Room Patrons & Hosts.

General Admission tickets are $25 each plus fees. Students are $10 plus fees. Tickets are on sale at mauiarts.org.