Writer Gretel Ehrlich Appointed Class of 1946 Visiting Professor of International Environmental Stud
WILLIAMSTOWN - Writer Gretel Ehrlich has been appointed Class of 1946 Visiting Professor of International Environmental Studies for the Spring semester at Williams College. She will teach "The Arctic: Memory, Landscape, Tradition." Ehrlich is an American travel writer, novelist, and essayist.Born in Santa Barbara, California, Ehrlich worked in film for 10 years before beginning to write full time in 1978. Her first book, "The Solace of Open Spaces," published in 1984, was awarded the Harold D. Vurcell Award for Distinguished Prose by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Her first novel, "Heart Mountain" (1987), centers the impact of a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans on a Wyoming ranching community.
Ehrlich is the author of 13 books. These also include "A Match to the Heart" (1994), an account of being hit by lightning and her subsequent hospitalization and debilitation. Following her recuperation, she spent eight years in Greenland living with subsistence hunters and traveling by dogsled, an experience she chronicled in "This Cold Heaven"(2001). This was followed by "The Future of Ice," an ode to the end of the season of winter as we know it, and a warning about the dire consequences of human-caused climate change.
She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Award, and National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities grants.
She participated in the circumpolar journey in the International Polar Year 2007-08 as a member the National Geographic team to explore the effect of the changing climate on the Arctic ecosystem and communities.
She received her M.A. from University of Arizona, Tucson in 2002 and also studied at Bennington College and the UCLA Film School.
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