Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary
Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary
Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary
Description
Description
"I go to Terry Tempest Williams for the reasons I go to Whitman and Thoreau: to recover a capacious spirit and to rejoin the urgent living world. She gives me something bigger than hope."―Richard Powers, author of The Overstory
From the visionary New York Times bestselling author, a revelatory work of narrative nonfiction exploring beauty in the desert, climate change, and, transformative moments of power in a world beset by uncertainty
Whether we believe it or not, rapid change is upon us. I am searching for grace.
In this time of political fragility, climate chaos, and seeking beauty wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences--animal, plant, memory, moment--that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world. The Glorians can be as small as an ant ferrying a coyote willow blossom to its queen or as commonplace as the night sky. But what they can collectively show us--about the radical act of attending to beauty and carrying forward against all odds--is immense.
Journeying through encounters with the Glorians in the red rock desert of Utah during the pandemic to Harvard University where she teaches in the Divinity School, Williams weaves a story of astonishing personal and societal insight. As she grapples with the unsettled state of the world, she turns not to despair but to deep reflection. She sees how the Glorians are calling us to attention, not as an army, but as fellow inhabitants of our sacred, threatened home. They remind us of the power of contact between species and the profound courage--and awareness--it will take to dream a more cohesive future into being.
Wise and lyrical, The Glorians is a testament to the power of witness, a field guide to finding grace in the unexpected, and a moving invitation to engage with one another and our surroundings with renewed intention. In a modern world filled with increasing noise and anxiety, Terry Tempest Williams offers honest sustenance for the mind and spirit and distinguishes herself again as a trusted voice to whom we can turn to more fully understand our times.
About the Author
About the Author
Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of over twenty books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Among her other books are Leap; Red; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; The Hour of Land; and Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Southeastern Utah.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
Praise for The Glorians:
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times Book Review, Literary Hub, and Book Riot
"Beauty is all around us, or so the clichéeacute; goes. Williams, the environmental activist and Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence, takes it a step further in these reflections on aging, relationships and more: Each ordinary little beauty is connected to each other, and to us."-New York Times Book Review, "The Nonfiction Everyone Will be Talking About in 2026"
"There's nobody I trust more than Terry Tempest Williams to be able to braid the ordinary with the holy, the divine with the mundane. She's someone who I've always been able to look to, in the need of regaining a faith in the world, a trust in it . . . Williams points to small moments, and poignant visions, as the representations of our hope, our resilience, our bright and gleaming futures. I know I need that now, more than ever."--Literary Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2026"
"A frank, passionate, knowledgeable, observant, and entrancing writer of conscience . . . After telling poignant and funny stories, lamenting injustice and environmental destruction, and contemplating stars, storms, flash floods, plants, stones, spiders, monarchs, time, love, and resistance, Williams assures us in this exquisite, deeply affecting, spirit-renewing inquiry that 'we can dream a new world into being.'"--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)
"As a fellow Utahn, I may be biased in my love for Terry Tempest Williams' nature essays. Her latest collection, in which she finds the sacred in ordinary moments, sounds especially needed. It speaks to the desire I and many others have to express spirituality, whether that's a connection to the divine or just something greater than themselves. By observing small beauties in nature, she finds hope to sustain her through a global sense of despair."--Andy Minshew, Book Riot, "Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2026"
"Mary Oliver gave us instructions for living a life: 'Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.' Terry Tempest Williams understood the assignment. In her latest, Williams lifts up the 'Glorians, ' a word that came to her in a dream in March 2020 . . . Ravens, the glow of apricots, a cup of tea, friendship; all of these are Glorians, the 'holy ordinary, ' doorways from the natural world that offer us connection with something sacred and profound. Williams's work, too, is such a doorway, and it is always a pleasure to walk through."--Book Riot
"This revelatory mix of nature writing and memoir from conservationist Williams reflects on encounters, which she calls 'Glorians, ' that reveal the interconnectedness of the natural world . . . Evocative and richly personal, Williams's writing seamlessly weaves together meditations on mortality, nature, and the modern world. Readers will be inspired."--Publishers Weekly
"In chapters that range from brief meditations to longer narratives, Williams bears witness 'to beauty and brokenness, love and grief.' Marriage, friendship, dreams, ravaging fires, her aging father, the pandemic, all feature in deeply felt pieces . . . An impassioned defense of interconnectedness."--Kirkus Reviews
"With The Glorians, Terry Tempest Williams has secured her place as one of our greatest living eco-visionaries. This book is the culmination and crescendo of the devotional work of a lifetime--deeply wise, poetic, necessary, brave, transporting, and transcendent."--V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues
"Williams is Whitmanesque in her vision: gene
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
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