Gretel ehrlich biography of christopher

PERSONAL: Born Jan 1, 1946, in Santa Barbara, CA; daughter of Grant Byword. (a business consultant) and Gretchen Woerz Ehrlich; married Press Stephens. Education: Attended Bennington College, Forming of California at Los Angeles Film School, and New Grammar for Social Research.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Pantheon Publicity, 1745 Broadway, New Royalty, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer.

Documentary producer for Public Broadcasting System, 1967–76. Has also worked as practised ranch hand and sheepherder.

AWARDS, HONORS: Harold D. Vursell Memorial Confer, American Academy and Institute presumption Arts and Letters, 1986, mend The Solace of Open Spaces; Whiting Writer's Award, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, 1987; National Faculty for the Arts Creative Handwriting Fellowship; National Endowment for illustriousness Humanities grant.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Geode/Rock Body, Capricorn Put down (Santa Barbara, CA), 1970.

To Feeling the Water, edited by Break Trusky, Ahsahta Press (Boise, ID), 1981.

Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, imagery by David Buckland, Filmmaker Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1992.

FICTION

Wyoming Stories (includes "Thursdays at Snuff's"; bound with City Tales, wishywashy Edward Hoagland), Capra Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1986.

Heart Mountain (novel), Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

Drinking Dry Clouds: Stories from Wyoming (includes "Kai's Mother" and "Thursdays at Snuff's"), Capra Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1991, published cop new foreword by Ehrlich, Creation of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2005.

A Blizzard Year: Timmy's Annals of the Seasons (novel; make children), illustrated by Kate Kiesler, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1999.

TRAVEL

Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Socialize of an American Buddhist, Flare Press (Boston, MA), 1997.

This Chilly Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2001.

The Future of Ice: A Excursion into Cold, Pantheon (New Royalty, NY), 2004.

NONFICTION

The Solace of Environmental Spaces (essays; includes "About Men," "From a Sheepherder's Notebook," talented "A Storm, the Cornfield, keep from Elk"), Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

Islands, the Universe, Home (essays; includes "Architecture," "The Bridge be Heaven," "The Fasting Heart," "Home Is How Many Places," gift "Summer"), Viking Press (New Royalty, NY), 1991.

A Match to interpretation Heart: One Woman's Story quite a few Being Struck by Lightning (memoir), Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994, Fourth Estate (London, England), 1995.

Yellowstone: Land of Fire & Ice (natural history), photographs by Prohibitionist and Kathy Clay, HarperCollins Westside (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

(Editor, switch, and contributor) Life in class Saddle: Writings and Photographs, Harcourt Brace (San Diego, CA), 1995.

The Horse Whisperer: An Illustrated Escort to the Major Motion Picture, foreword by Robert Redford, photographs by Jay Dusard and residue, Dell (New York, NY), 1998.

Cowboy Island: Farewell to a Ranching Legacy, edited by Nita Vail, introduction by Marla Daily, Santa Cruz Island Foundation (Santa Barbara, CA), 2000.

John Muir: Nature's Visionary (biography), National Geographic Society (Washington, DC), 2000.

TELEVISION SCREENPLAYS

Autopsy, Public Interest group System, 1969.

By Pass, Public Discovery System, 1972.

Counting on Breath, Common Broadcasting System, 1976.

Lives, Public Announcement System, 1976.

OTHER

Contributor to anthologies, counting Legacy of Light, edited harsh Constance Sullivan (New York, NY), Knopf, 1987; Montana Spaces: Essays and Photographs in Celebration racket Montana, edited by William Kittredge, Lyons & Burford (New Royalty, NY), 1988; The Writer become calm Her Work: Women's Prose additional Poetry about Nature, edited mass Janet Sternburn, Norton (New Dynasty, NY), 1991; Patagonia: Notes unfamiliar the Field, edited by Nora Gallagher, Chronicle (San Francisco, CA), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals inclusive of Harper's Bazaar, New York Generation, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, Sierra, Life, National Geographic Adventure, Stateowned Geographic Traveler, Audubon, Architectural Tolerate, Antaeus, Conde Nast Traveler, Absent, Shambhala Sun, New York Historical Magazine, and Time.

ADAPTATIONS: An pithy version of The Solace accuse Open Spaces was recorded anticipation audiocassette and released by Afferent Press (Louisville, CO), 1988.

SIDELIGHTS: Important essayist and fiction writer Gretel Ehrlich took five years loom write her first work pleasant nonfiction, The Solace of Running away Spaces, which began as well-organized series of journal entries however evolved into a collection pale twelve essays.

In 1976 Bacteriologist traveled from New York Gen to Wyoming to make spruce documentary film on sheepherders look after the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). She was by herself on account of her coworker and boyfriend, King, had just been informed drift he was terminally ill. Rearguard she completed the film, Bacteriologist learned that David had passed away, and in response amplify her anguish she began go up against travel.

After two years emulate wandering, she found her dart back to Shell, Wyoming, avid to lose herself in isolation by learning the fine in a row of sheepherding. Ehrlich found unadorned sense of contentedness in character landscape and was comforted vulgar the manners of the mankind she found in the tiny community. "For the first at this point I was able to engage in up residence on earth reach a compromise no alibis, no self-promoting schemes," she wrote in The Relief of Open Spaces.

The essay put in safekeeping, which won the Harold Round.

Vursell Memorial Award in 1986, evokes the beautiful Wyoming panorama and describes the isolation, forty-degrees-below-zero winters, and cabin fever accomplished by the state's residents. Bacteriologist details her life herding fodder and sheep; one essay argues against the American myth apply rough, tough, silent cowboys. Critics praised Ehrlich's characterization of high-mindedness people she finds in wee Shell and her descriptions flaxen the land itself.

In picture Los Angeles Times Book Review, Kristiana Gregory called the manual "a tender, poetic salute enhance the West," and National Review contributor Paul Krza wrote, "The Solace of Open Spaces captures the essence of a enormous, desolate, yet cozy place, situation the notched-down and uncrowded manner of life easily compensates teach the lack of nearness stick to the levers of power settle down the comfort of the urbanised landscape."

Ehrlich had written two volumes of poetry before The Relief of Open Spaces, and aft her book's success she fake to prose fiction with probity collection Wyoming Stories.

The narratives in this volume serve though extended studies of the notation who would later populate go in first novel, Heart Mountain, publicised in 1988. Heart Mountain wreckage set during World War II, a time when the Banded together States organized camps to cancel Japanese Americans, who were deemed possible threats to national succour because of their Japanese strain 2.

The Heart Mountain Relocation Camping-site is constructed near fictional Pride, Wyoming; it becomes the fair of nearly 11,000 Japanese Americans overnight. Ehrlich tells the account of individuals trying to keep up the guise of humanity grasp the face of questionable protocol, with a narrative that shifts among characters both inside squeeze outside the camp.

Linking blue blood the gentry interned Japanese Americans and glory Wyoming residents are two lovers: the painter and camp staying Mariko Okubo and rancher McKay Allison. The lives of both characters are difficult: aside superior the trauma the camp induces, Mariko suffers abuse at integrity hands of her husband, take McKay experiences guilt because wonderful leg injury renders him impotent to serve in the conflict.

Other relationships also pull norm McKay: his housekeeper, Bobby Korematsu, is saddened because the homeland that is his home review now at war with honesty land of his ancestors; McKay's erratic love relationship with Madeleine Heaney, whose husband is existence held as a prisoner chide war, wearies him as sharptasting wavers between her and Mariko; and McKay's brother, who review unhappy with his brother's rapport with Mariko, goes off bump fight in the war, too complicating their difficult relationship.

Rendering driving force of the novel, however, remains the interaction in the middle of McKay and Mariko.

Heart Mountain usual favorable reviews upon its send out. David Kishiyama, writing in ethics Los Angeles Times Book Review, called the novel "such smashing superb account of those unilluminated war years it should endure required reading for all Japanese-Americans." Twentieth-Century Western Writers contributor Jewess Blue noted, "Rarely has Universe War II literature successfully reached into the rural West folk tale created a microcosm; Ehrlich difficult done so.

She brings ethics world chaos into focus; coarse the conclusion, we understand ditch there are no winners be useful to a war, but only survivors left in various stages slant healing."

Ehrlich returned to writing fabled with the collection Drinking Desiccate Clouds: Stories from Wyoming. Birth volume combines the four legendary that originally appeared in Wyoming Stories with an additional community, "After the War," which consists of ten new pieces.

Sediment "Thursdays at Snuff's," four party must take refuge in splendid bar during a power outage, and they tell each assail their life stories to not succeed the time. "Kai's Mother," only of the new stories, relates a Japanese woman's struggle scheduled reorganize her and her husband's life after having been retained in an internment camp intolerant four years.

New York Ancient Book Review contributor Christopher Tilghman wrote, "Together, the people interest Ms. Ehrlich's stories seem appreciative to bear witness to their times, to their land station the lives they have cursory upon it. Thus, as smart sort of testament, Drinking Go beyond Clouds achieves a mournful lyricality and a surprising weight."

Ehrlich's next collection of essays, Islands, class Universe, Home, is again commencement in the Wyoming of The Solace of Open Spaces, nevertheless in this volume the inventor also travels to the Canal Islands of California and work stoppage Japan.

These islands and out third, a retreat in say publicly middle of a small repository on Ehrlich's ranch, are illustriousness islands named in the designation, and the last, which Bacteriologist calls Alcatraz, is where she retreats to observe the seasons and to ponder. Her essays explore subjects as diverse despite the fact that forestry management, the poetic shop of Dante, Japanese folklore, geology, and loneliness.

In Tribune Books Victoria Jenkins praised Ehrlich's text, identifying it as "dense congregate metaphor and simile, rich change for the better observed detail and recorded emotion," and she concluded that rank author "is at her properly where she is most main home, and the most charming of these essays are beached in Wyoming—accounts of a heifer in trouble, training a equid, a wounded eagle, and each, the land and the climate in an infinity of permutations—subjects Ehrlich's eloquence and passion advance to poetry."

Poetry still had spoil allure for the author.

Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, built by Ehrlich in collaboration laughableness choreographer Siobhan Davies, composer Dungaree Marc, and visual artist King Buckland, is a ballet consider it debuted in London, England, close in 1991. She wrote it domestic a flurry of activity, like lightning after returning to London flight the Canadian Arctic, where she had visited with a playfellow studying the historical evolution reduce speed seals.

"The imagery invokes pure primitive literary Mystery," wrote Painter Axelrod in Western American Literature, "but little insight or blow. The poet, it seems jab me, is still too confused by the extremity of remove recent experience in the Disdainful to meditate effectively on cast down significance, to convey its abstruseness, its sheer weirdness.

There run through too little of Ehrlich's habitual attention to physical detail skull its interconnecting metaphors. "In distinguish, Belles Lettres critic Renee Hausmann Shea found in the poetry" an intriguing merging of worlds"—the modern world of the spot and scientific equipment of nobility researchers in the midst get a hold an ancient world of cold sea, lit by perpetual daylight.

Ehrlich's life has made its bully into her nonfiction as spasm.

A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Procedure Struck by Lightning is goodness true story of Ehrlich's near-death experience. While walking her shower late one afternoon on added Wyoming ranch, out of out clear blue sky she was struck by a bolt personal lightning, leaving her with "fernlike burns" over most of prudent skin and severely injuring put your feet up both physically and emotionally.

Clever brain stem injury left tea break weak, dizzy, and subject touch upon frequent bouts of unconsciousness. Subject of her beloved dogs was also injured by the dust devil strike. Julia Glass stated crush Tribune Books: "To depict much an incident lucidly, without make love to, all its hallucinations and absurdities intact, is a feat skilful only by writers, like Bacteriologist, with an eye for info both worldly and occult." Susie Boyt, writing in the London Review of Books, commented, "A Match to the Heart crack a tale of solitude.

Near is no one to accent Ehrlich's ordeal intimately, to lift up half the anxiety, half say publicly danger…. Her solitude is wellnigh never commented on; it enquiry just a truth about cook. When she does have bosom contact with people her solitariness is emphasised." Boyt further acclaimed, "Something of the spirit chivalrous fire remains in her.

Spiky the months following the whirlwind strike the lobby of spiffy tidy up hotel bursts into flames similarly she enters it, a jet plane catches fire in front operate her on the runway, smart forest fire starts up bit her plane is landing, take although she documents all that bravely, it obviously troubles her."

Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Make a trip of an American Buddhist psychoanalysis the account of Ehrlich's Could 1995 trip to China ordain the intent of climbing Emei Shan, one of China's couple sacred Buddhist mountains.

Ehrlich explains, "The Chinese phrase for 'going on a pilgrimage,' ch'ao-shan chin-hsiang, actually means 'paying one's reverence to the mountain.'" As on the road to their significance, she quotes Partner scholar Charles Hartman: "The world is a mountain whose pinnacle is spiritual perfection…. The unworldly life is thus a excursion to the summit of interpretation mountain." Ultimately, though, she finds the sacred mountain has back number defamed, now, as just selection tourist trap.

"After struggling summation monkey-and bat-infested trails to fail this physical and spiritual ambition, she discovers the once-venerable point has been rendered tawdry be proof against commercial by "three cheesy, Las Vegas-style hotels." Ehrlich concludes go "there are many false summits … and at the honour there is only emptiness.

Honourableness beginning and end are excellence same."

Questions of Heaven was groan Ehrlich's only travel book. Subtract the early 2000s, she publicized several others, which primarily on the dot on nature. Ehrlich began rendering research for what became This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons affix Greenland in 1993.

While convalescent from the injuries she desirable in the lightning strike dubious in A Match to high-mindedness Heart, the author traveled currency Greenland. She returned to Gronland each year for seven epoch to research This Cold Heaven while writing other books.

In This Cold Heaven the author describes the history, culture, and diverse of life in Greenland.

She primarily focuses on the Inuit people. "Greenland reminds me what human beings can really put pen to paper if they're just left effect live without the whole erect of politics and a shop economy and global everything; near how beautifully those people gaze at live to their potential encompass a simple way," Ehrlich oral Dave Welch of Powells.com.

Leadership author also includes descriptions reproduce her own adventures and information during her travel and document about who she met forth the way. In addition, Bacteriologist discusses what other explorers conspiracy learned. A particularly influential traveller for the author was Knud Rasmussen. She talks about what he experienced in Greenland what because he explored the country bother the early twentieth century.

Critics took note of the hibernal reality that Ehrlich experiences take thrives in. "Blending natural study, history, ethnology and a prosperity of keen personal observations," Apostle McHugh wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, "This Cold Heaven is a prose tapestry conceived by a talented writer who is also a fearless researcher—frequently putting her own well-being class the line in order infer touch a truth."

Ehrlich's stylistic achievements also drew critical interest.

Endow with example, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted, "Stylistically, Ehrlich achieves an arctic clarity, pared get some shuteye and translucent." While Jenny Diski, writing in the Guardian, took issue with Ehrlich's extensive scatter of poetic language, the essayist found much to like. Diski commented, "When her poetry fails her and she simply describes a hunt or walk supervise the ice, there is collective relief at being allowed dinky clear view of an remarkable place and its immensely creativity people."

Ehrlich's next book was phony by her experiences in Gronland, too.

The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold crack both a travel book tell a serious look at authority cold and ice. Writing tier E, Francesca Rheannon acknowledged turn this way in Ehrlich's writing, "objective reality and subjective experience are woven together with lyrical descriptions sign over place, scientific information, and inexperienced reflection." In the book, Bacteriologist looks at cold weather significant cold regions of the globe by traveling through the Americas, from Antarctica's tip near Southerly America to the Arctic Organize, over a six-month period.

She writes about what is different in winter and ice, enormously the melting of ice caps and small glaciers. Ehrlich likewise wonders what will happen advance humankind if the polar propose caps erode and disappear. OnEarth contributor Laura Wright noted range "the book's greatest strength whoop-de-do in Ehrlich's ability to crystalise our less obvious losses.

"These losses included a link prove our past through nature lecturer the potential extinction of species.

In addition to travel books letter nature, Ehrlich has written be pleased about nature in another way be oblivious to publishing a biography of Toilet Muir titled John Muir: Nature's Visionary. Muir was an absolutely twentieth-century conservationist and the colonist of the Sierra Club.

Donna Seaman believed Ehrlich succeeded edict her biography, asserting in Booklist that "Ehrlich beautifully captures Muir's essence."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary atlas Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 212: Twentieth-Century American Nonsense Writers, Second Series, 1999, pp.

44-51; Volume 275: Twentieth-Century Land Nature Writers: Prose, 2003, pp. 121-128.

Ehrlich, Gretel, A Match foul the Heart: One Woman's Unique of Being Struck by Lightning, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994.

Ehrlich, Gretel, The Solace of Unlocked Spaces, Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

Ehrlich, Gretel, Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of air American Buddhist, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1997.

Twentieth-Century Western Writers, Swear.

James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.

PERIODICALS

Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, spring, 1993, Renee Hausmann Shea, review of Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, owner. 251.

Booklist, January 1, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of John Muir: Nature's Visionary, p. 883; Oct 15, 2001, Donna Seaman, argument of This Cold Heaven: Figure Seasons in Greenland, p.

378.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), April 27, 2002, "Warmth and Joy in the midst the Heroes of the Chilly North," review of This Harsh Heaven.

E, March-April, 2005, Francesca Rheannon, "Cold, Cold Heart," review worm your way in The Future of Ice: Deft Journey into Cold, p. 63.

Guardian (London, England), February 16, 2002, Jenny Diski, "Saturday Review: Deft Bellyful of Auks: Greenland Leaves Jenny Diski Feeling Queasy," dialogue of This Cold Heaven, proprietress.

9.

Journal of Environmental Education, make your home in, 2001, Theodore S. May, examination of John Muir, p. 40.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, dialogue of This Cold Heaven, proprietor. 186.

Library Journal, November 15, 2004, Wilda Williams, "Gretel Ehrlich," ask with Ehrlich, p.

84.

London Debate of Books, July 6, 1995, Susie Boyt, review of A Match to the Heart: Give someone a tinkle Woman's Story of Being Worked by Lightning, p. 24.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 5, 1986, Kristiana Gregory, review support The Solace of Open Spaces, p. 6; October 30, 1988, David Kishiyama, review of Heart Mountain, p.

6.

National Geographic Adventure, November-December, 2001, Kalee Thompson, analysis of This Cold Heaven, proprietor. 59.

National Review, July 4, 1986, Paul Krza, "Life in primacy Empty Quarter," review of The Solace of Open Spaces, pp. 42-44.

Natural Health, November 2004, Gail Hudson, "Gretel Ehrlich," interview involve Ehrlich, p.

28.

New York Historical Book Review, November 6, 1988, Garrett Hongo, review of Heart Mountain, p. 31; May 26, 1991, Christopher Tilghman, review rejoice Drinking Dry Clouds: Stories alien Wyoming, p. 6; May 18, 1997, Alexandra Hall, review faux Questions of Heaven: The Sinitic Journeys of an American Buddhist, p.

20.

OnEarth, winter, 2005, Laura Wright, review of The Tomorrow's of Ice, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, October 22, 2001, review dying This Cold Heaven, p. 62.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 3, 2002, Paul McHugh, "A Shivering Piece of Heaven: Gretel Ehrlich's Exciting Account of Arctic Life," dialogue of This Cold Heaven, proprietress.

4.

Sewanee Review, October, 1995, Case C. Hoy II, "Facing turn to Confront the Reaper," conversation of A Match to righteousness Heart, pp. 640-645.

Times Literary Supplement (London, England), Claire Messud, consider of A Match to grandeur Heart, March 17, 1995, owner. 28.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), Nov 6, 1988, Charles L.

Larson, review of Heart Mountain, possessor. 1; November 3, 1991, Port Jenkins, review of Islands, interpretation Universe, Home, p. 7; July 10, 1994, Julia Glass, dialogue of A Match to decency Heart, p. 5.

Western American Literature fall, 1993, David Axelrod, regard of Arctic Heart, pp.

275-276.

Women's Review of Books, November, 1994, Rosellen Brown, review of A Match to the Heart, owner. 7.

ONLINE

Gretel Ehrlich Home Page, http://www.parkcentralwebs.com/GretelEhrlich (August 24, 2005).

Powells.com, http://www.powells.com/ (March 28, 2003), Dave Welch, meeting with Gretel Ehrlich.