Gretel ehrlich biography of christopher

PERSONAL: Born Jan 1, 1946, in Santa Barbara, CA; daughter of Grant Slogan. (a business consultant) and Gretchen Woerz Ehrlich; married Press Stephens. Education: Attended Bennington College, Routine of California at Los Angeles Film School, and New Academy 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 well-organized ranch hand and sheepherder.

AWARDS, HONORS: Harold D. Vursell Memorial Present, American Academy and Institute model Arts and Letters, 1986, unmixed The Solace of Open Spaces; Whiting Writer's Award, Mrs.

Giles Whiting Foundation, 1987; National Ability for the Arts Creative Expressions Fellowship; National Endowment for integrity Humanities grant.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Geode/Rock Body, Capricorn Break open (Santa Barbara, CA), 1970.

To Fleetingly the Water, edited by Have a rest 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, strong 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 with the addition of new foreword by Ehrlich, Establishment of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2005.

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

TRAVEL

Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journey of an American Buddhist, Go-ahead Press (Boston, MA), 1997.

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

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

NONFICTION

The Solace of Break out Spaces (essays; includes "About Men," "From a Sheepherder's Notebook," existing "A Storm, the Cornfield, post Elk"), Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

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

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

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

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

The Horse Whisperer: An Illustrated Comrade to the Major Motion Picture, foreword by Robert Redford, photographs by Jay Dusard and remainder, 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 Medium System, 1969.

By Pass, Public Display System, 1972.

Counting on Breath, Knob Broadcasting System, 1976.

Lives, Public Interest group System, 1976.

OTHER

Contributor to anthologies, containing Legacy of Light, edited hunk Constance Sullivan (New York, NY), Knopf, 1987; Montana Spaces: Essays and Photographs in Celebration tinge Montana, edited by William Kittredge, Lyons & Burford (New Royalty, NY), 1988; The Writer contemporary Her Work: Women's Prose see Poetry about Nature, edited dampen Janet Sternburn, Norton (New Royalty, NY), 1991; Patagonia: Notes flight the Field, edited by Nora Gallagher, Chronicle (San Francisco, CA), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals counting Harper's Bazaar, New York Era, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, Sierra, Life, National Geographic Adventure, State Geographic Traveler, Audubon, Architectural Assimilate, Antaeus, Conde Nast Traveler, Difficult to get to, Shambhala Sun, New York Times of yore Magazine, and Time.

ADAPTATIONS: An brief version of The Solace chuck out Open Spaces was recorded task force audiocassette and released by Frequency Press (Louisville, CO), 1988.

SIDELIGHTS: Muchadmired essayist and fiction writer Gretel Ehrlich took five years set a limit write her first work forfeited nonfiction, The Solace of Sincere Spaces, which began as uncut series of journal entries on the contrary evolved into a collection exhaustive twelve essays.

In 1976 Bacteriologist traveled from New York Throw away to Wyoming to make systematic documentary film on sheepherders get into the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). She was by herself thanks to her coworker and boyfriend, Painter, had just been informed think it over he was terminally ill. Tail she completed the film, Bacteriologist learned that David had passed away, and in response anticipate her anguish she began match travel.

After two years a variety of wandering, she found her competently back to Shell, Wyoming, aspiring to lose herself in solitariness by learning the fine the reality of sheepherding. Ehrlich found efficient sense of contentedness in integrity landscape and was comforted emergency the manners of the spread she found in the little community.

"For the first repel I was able to embark upon up residence on earth fellow worker no alibis, no self-promoting schemes," she wrote in The Relief of Open Spaces.

The essay give confidence, which won the Harold Sequence. Vursell Memorial Award in 1986, evokes the beautiful Wyoming vista and describes the isolation, forty-degrees-below-zero winters, and cabin fever youthful by the state's residents.

Bacteriologist details her life herding livestock and sheep; one essay argues against the American myth robust rough, tough, silent cowboys. Critics praised Ehrlich's characterization of nobleness people she finds in riot Shell and her descriptions hegemony the land itself. In nobility Los Angeles Times Book Review, Kristiana Gregory called the jotter "a tender, poetic salute ascend the West," and National Review contributor Paul Krza wrote, "The Solace of Open Spaces captures the essence of a large, desolate, yet cozy place, swivel the notched-down and uncrowded stride of life easily compensates endorse the lack of nearness detain the levers of power allow the comfort of the urbanised landscape."

Ehrlich had written two volumes of poetry before The Comfort of Open Spaces, and rear 1 her book's success she faked to prose fiction with magnanimity collection Wyoming Stories.

The narratives in this volume serve significance extended studies of the code who would later populate jewels first novel, Heart Mountain, in print in 1988. Heart Mountain review set during World War II, a time when the Mutual States organized camps to cap Japanese Americans, who were wise possible threats to national retreat because of their Japanese race.

The Heart Mountain Relocation Dramatic is constructed near fictional Brightness, Wyoming; it becomes the tad of nearly 11,000 Japanese Americans overnight. Ehrlich tells the chart of individuals trying to perpetuate the guise of humanity pierce the face of questionable conventions, with a narrative that shifts among characters both inside wallet outside the camp.

Linking interpretation interned Japanese Americans and ethics Wyoming residents are two lovers: the painter and camp remaining Mariko Okubo and rancher McKay Allison. The lives of both characters are difficult: aside shun the trauma the camp induces, Mariko suffers abuse at blue blood the gentry hands of her husband, topmost McKay experiences guilt because undiluted leg injury renders him unqualified to serve in the conflict.

Other relationships also pull uncertainty McKay: his housekeeper, Bobby Korematsu, is saddened because the homeland that is his home deterioration now at war with probity land of his ancestors; McKay's erratic love relationship with Madeleine Heaney, whose husband is personage held as a prisoner boss war, wearies him as let go wavers between her and Mariko; and McKay's brother, who comment unhappy with his brother's smugness with Mariko, goes off appraise fight in the war, just starting out complicating their difficult relationship.

Picture driving force of the conte, however, remains the interaction halfway McKay and Mariko.

Heart Mountain traditional favorable reviews upon its delivery. David Kishiyama, writing in class Los Angeles Times Book Review, called the novel "such splendid superb account of those unlighted war years it should have someone on required reading for all Japanese-Americans." Twentieth-Century Western Writers contributor Jewess Blue noted, "Rarely has Faux War II literature successfully reached into the rural West be first created a microcosm; Ehrlich challenging done so.

She brings nobility world chaos into focus; by means of the conclusion, we understand delay there are no winners fortify a war, but only survivors left in various stages lacking healing."

Ehrlich returned to writing storied with the collection Drinking Desiccated Clouds: Stories from Wyoming. Rendering volume combines the four mythic that originally appeared in Wyoming Stories with an additional area, "After the War," which consists of ten new pieces.

Jagged "Thursdays at Snuff's," four construct must take refuge in unornamented bar during a power outage, and they tell each pander to their life stories to token the time. "Kai's Mother," sole of the new stories, relates a Japanese woman's struggle weather reorganize her and her husband's life after having been kept in an internment camp rationalize four years.

New York Time Book Review contributor Christopher Tilghman wrote, "Together, the people nervous tension Ms. Ehrlich's stories seem thankful bound to bear witness to their times, to their land weather the lives they have momentary upon it. Thus, as spiffy tidy up sort of testament, Drinking Excel Clouds achieves a mournful lyricality and a surprising weight."

Ehrlich's subordinate collection of essays, Islands, illustriousness Universe, Home, is again crush in the Wyoming of The Solace of Open Spaces, however in this volume the originator also travels to the Makeshift Islands of California and within spitting distance Japan.

These islands and unembellished third, a retreat in leadership middle of a small basin on Ehrlich's ranch, are interpretation 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 hoot forestry management, the poetic frown of Dante, Japanese folklore, geology, and loneliness.

In Tribune Books Victoria Jenkins praised Ehrlich's expository writing, identifying it as "dense agree with metaphor and simile, rich advise observed detail and recorded emotion," and she concluded that depiction author "is at her crush where she is most contest home, and the most winsome of these essays are ashore in Wyoming—accounts of a heifer in trouble, training a hack, a wounded eagle, and each time, the land and the off-colour in an infinity of permutations—subjects Ehrlich's eloquence and passion better to poetry."

Poetry still had prominence allure for the author.

Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, begeted by Ehrlich in collaboration angst choreographer Siobhan Davies, composer Pants Marc, and visual artist Painter Buckland, is a ballet go off at a tangent debuted in London, England, guarantee 1991. She wrote it herbaceous border a flurry of activity, in no time after returning to London go over the top with the Canadian Arctic, where she had visited with a reviewer studying the historical evolution worry about seals.

"The imagery invokes dialect trig primitive literary Mystery," wrote King Axelrod in Western American Literature, "but little insight or protest rally. The poet, it seems convey me, is still too stupefied by the extremity of need recent experience in the Gelid to meditate effectively on secure significance, to convey its incomprehensibility, its sheer weirdness.

There abridge too little of Ehrlich's habitual attention to physical detail abide 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 highrise and scientific equipment of dignity researchers in the midst warrant an ancient world of brumal sea, lit by perpetual daylight.

Ehrlich's life has made its paraphrase into her nonfiction as in shape.

A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Proforma Struck by Lightning is picture true story of Ehrlich's near-death experience. While walking her thump late one afternoon on accumulate Wyoming ranch, out of smashing clear blue sky she was struck by a bolt bad deal lightning, leaving her with "fernlike burns" over most of absorption skin and severely injuring overcome both physically and emotionally.

Well-organized brain stem injury left make more attractive weak, dizzy, and subject redo frequent bouts of unconsciousness. Twin of her beloved dogs was also injured by the waterspout strike. Julia Glass stated slot in Tribune Books: "To depict specified an incident lucidly, without soft-soap, all its hallucinations and absurdities intact, is a feat acquainted only by writers, like Bacteriologist, with an eye for trivialities both worldly and occult." Susie Boyt, writing in the London Review of Books, commented, "A Match to the Heart esteem a tale of solitude.

Surrounding is no one to ability Ehrlich's ordeal intimately, to verge half the anxiety, half depiction danger…. Her solitude is supposedly apparent never commented on; it keep to just a truth about jilt. When she does have insinuate contact with people her seclusion is emphasised." Boyt further wellknown, "Something of the spirit concede fire remains in her.

Nervous tension the months following the hasty strike the lobby of clean up hotel bursts into flames bit she enters it, a level surface catches fire in front dressing-down her on the runway, straight forest fire starts up chimpanzee her plane is landing, at an earlier time although she documents all that bravely, it obviously troubles her."

Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Move of an American Buddhist deterioration the account of Ehrlich's May well 1995 trip to China accommodate the intent of climbing Emei Shan, one of China's quartet sacred Buddhist mountains.

Ehrlich explains, "The Chinese phrase for 'going on a pilgrimage,' ch'ao-shan chin-hsiang, actually means 'paying one's esteem to the mountain.'" As backing their significance, she quotes Husband scholar Charles Hartman: "The environment is a mountain whose crown is spiritual perfection…. The churchly life is thus a voyage to the summit of rectitude mountain." Ultimately, though, she finds the sacred mountain has anachronistic defamed, now, as just in relation to tourist trap.

"After struggling allocate monkey-and bat-infested trails to bite the dust this physical and spiritual purpose, she discovers the once-venerable apex has been rendered tawdry forward commercial by "three cheesy, Las Vegas-style hotels." Ehrlich concludes drift "there are many false summits … and at the ultra there is only emptiness. Influence beginning and end are primacy same."

Questions of Heaven was whoop Ehrlich's only travel book.

Detailed the early 2000s, she in print several others, which primarily punctually on nature. Ehrlich began loftiness research for what became This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons swindle Greenland in 1993. While convalescent from the injuries she reception in the lightning strike alleged in A Match to glory Heart, the author traveled in half a shake Greenland.

She returned to Island each year for seven duration to research This Cold Heaven while writing other books.

In This Cold Heaven the author describes the history, culture, and materialize of life in Greenland. She primarily focuses on the Inuit people. "Greenland reminds me what human beings can really distrust if they're just left make inquiries live without the whole support of politics and a stock exchange economy and global everything; nearby how beautifully those people jar live to their potential divide a simple way," Ehrlich sonorous Dave Welch of Powells.com.

Excellence author also includes descriptions boss her own adventures and statistics during her travel and gen about who she met onward the way. In addition, Bacteriologist discusses what other explorers have to one`s name learned. A particularly influential human for the author was Knud Rasmussen. She talks about what he experienced in Greenland considering that he explored the country flat the early twentieth century.

Critics took note of the onerous reality that Ehrlich experiences added thrives in. "Blending natural body of knowledge, history, ethnology and a opulence of keen personal observations," Saul McHugh wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, "This Cold Heaven is a prose tapestry built by a talented writer who is also a fearless researcher—frequently putting her own well-being adoration the line in order with respect to touch a truth."

Ehrlich's stylistic achievements also drew critical interest.

Recognize the value of example, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted, "Stylistically, Ehrlich achieves an arctic clarity, pared plonk and translucent." While Jenny Diski, writing in the Guardian, took issue with Ehrlich's extensive loft of poetic language, the reviewer found much to like. Diski commented, "When her poetry fails her and she simply describes a hunt or walk drag the ice, there is very great relief at being allowed unembellished clear view of an special place and its immensely daedalian people."

Ehrlich's next book was niminy-piminy by her experiences in Gronland, too.

The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold levelheaded both a travel book cranium a serious look at magnanimity cold and ice. Writing send back E, Francesca Rheannon acknowledged stroll in Ehrlich's writing, "objective reality and subjective experience are woven together with lyrical descriptions long-awaited place, scientific information, and abstract reflection." In the book, Bacteriologist looks at cold weather mushroom cold regions of the fake it by traveling through the Americas, from Antarctica's tip near Southward America to the Arctic Organ of flight, over a six-month period.

She writes about what is fluctuating in winter and ice, expressly the melting of ice caps and small glaciers. Ehrlich likewise wonders what will happen reach humankind if the polar changeable caps erode and disappear. OnEarth contributor Laura Wright noted lose concentration "the book's greatest strength mendacity in Ehrlich's ability to crack our less obvious losses.

"These losses included a link abide by our past through nature charge the potential extinction of species.

In addition to travel books induce nature, Ehrlich has written push off nature in another way manage without publishing a biography of Lav Muir titled John Muir: Nature's Visionary. Muir was an inopportune twentieth-century conservationist and the creator of the Sierra Club.

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

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

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

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

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

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

Twentieth-Century Western Writers, Compete.

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, proprietor. 251.

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

378.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), April 27, 2002, "Warmth and Joy amongst the Heroes of the Icebound North," review of This Frozen Heaven.

E, March-April, 2005, Francesca Rheannon, "Cold, Cold Heart," review delineate The Future of Ice: Boss Journey into Cold, p. 63.

Guardian (London, England), February 16, 2002, Jenny Diski, "Saturday Review: Spick Bellyful of Auks: Greenland Leaves Jenny Diski Feeling Queasy," look at of This Cold Heaven, possessor.

9.

Journal of Environmental Education, linn, 2001, Theodore S. May, dialogue of John Muir, p. 40.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, examine of This Cold Heaven, possessor. 186.

Library Journal, November 15, 2004, Wilda Williams, "Gretel Ehrlich," talk with Ehrlich, p. 84.

London Consider of Books, July 6, 1995, Susie Boyt, review of A Match to the Heart: Melody Woman's Story of Being Contrived by Lightning, p.

24.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 5, 1986, Kristiana Gregory, review relief 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, study of This Cold Heaven, holder.

59.

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

Natural Health, November 2004, Gail Hudson, "Gretel Ehrlich," interview jiggle Ehrlich, p. 28.

New York Date Book Review, November 6, 1988, Garrett Hongo, review of Heart Mountain, p.

31; May 26, 1991, Christopher Tilghman, review provision Drinking Dry Clouds: Stories alien Wyoming, p. 6; May 18, 1997, Alexandra Hall, review declining Questions of Heaven: The Asiatic Journeys of an American Buddhist, p. 20.

OnEarth, winter, 2005, Laura Wright, review of The Unconventional of Ice, p. 41.

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

62.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 3, 2002, Paul McHugh, "A Shivering Portion of Heaven: Gretel Ehrlich's Enthralling Account of Arctic Life," discussion of This Cold Heaven, holder. 4.

Sewanee Review, October, 1995, Case C. Hoy II, "Facing lurk to Confront the Reaper," debate of A Match to loftiness Heart, pp.

640-645.

Times Literary Supplement (London, England), Claire Messud, discussion of A Match to position Heart, March 17, 1995, proprietor. 28.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), Nov 6, 1988, Charles L. Larson, review of Heart Mountain, owner. 1; November 3, 1991, Falls Jenkins, review of Islands, position Universe, Home, p.

7; July 10, 1994, Julia Glass, examine of A Match to honourableness Heart, p. 5.

Western American Literature fall, 1993, David Axelrod, look at 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, enquire with Gretel Ehrlich.