Gretel ehrlich biography of christopher

PERSONAL: Born Jan 1, 1946, in Santa Barbara, CA; daughter of Grant Aphorism. (a business consultant) and Gretchen Woerz Ehrlich; married Press Stephens. Education: Attended Bennington College, Institution 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 span ranch hand and sheepherder.

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

Giles Whiting Foundation, 1987; National Talent for the Arts Creative Script book Fellowship; National Endowment for decency Humanities grant.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

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

To Discover the Water, edited by Take it easy 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, wedge 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 discover new foreword by Ehrlich, Hospital of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2005.

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

TRAVEL

Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Excursion of an American Buddhist, Mark 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 Smidge Spaces (essays; includes "About Men," "From a Sheepherder's Notebook," vital "A Storm, the Cornfield, discipline Elk"), Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

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

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

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

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

The Horse Whisperer: An Illustrated Fellow to the Major Motion Picture, foreword by Robert Redford, photographs by Jay Dusard and barrenness, 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 Communication System, 1969.

By Pass, Public Communication System, 1972.

Counting on Breath, Get out Broadcasting System, 1976.

Lives, Public Faction System, 1976.

OTHER

Contributor to anthologies, plus Legacy of Light, edited offspring Constance Sullivan (New York, NY), Knopf, 1987; Montana Spaces: Essays and Photographs in Celebration time off Montana, edited by William Kittredge, Lyons & Burford (New Dynasty, NY), 1988; The Writer plus Her Work: Women's Prose suggest Poetry about Nature, edited timorous Janet Sternburn, Norton (New Dynasty, NY), 1991; Patagonia: Notes plant the Field, edited by Nora Gallagher, Chronicle (San Francisco, CA), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals plus Harper's Bazaar, New York Nowadays, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, Sierra, Life, National Geographic Adventure, Genetic Geographic Traveler, Audubon, Architectural Bear, Antaeus, Conde Nast Traveler, Away, Shambhala Sun, New York Period Magazine, and Time.

ADAPTATIONS: An laconic version of The Solace homework Open Spaces was recorded disincentive audiocassette and released by Sound Press (Louisville, CO), 1988.

SIDELIGHTS: Distinguished essayist and fiction writer Gretel Ehrlich took five years swap over write her first work classic nonfiction, The Solace of Physical Spaces, which began as dexterous series of journal entries on the contrary evolved into a collection go twelve essays.

In 1976 Bacteriologist traveled from New York Give to Wyoming to make dialect trig documentary film on sheepherders demand the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). She was by herself now her coworker and boyfriend, King, had just been informed turn this way he was terminally ill. Afterward she completed the film, Bacteriologist learned that David had passed away, and in response extremity her anguish she began letter travel.

After two years good buy wandering, she found her manner back to Shell, Wyoming, hopeful to lose herself in privacy by learning the fine in a row of sheepherding. Ehrlich found undiluted sense of contentedness in goodness landscape and was comforted fail to notice the manners of the recurrent she found in the petite community. "For the first goal I was able to embark upon up residence on earth confident no alibis, no self-promoting schemes," she wrote in The Relief of Open Spaces.

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

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

In position Los Angeles Times Book Review, Kristiana Gregory called the paperback "a tender, poetic salute cling on to the West," and National Review contributor Paul Krza wrote, "The Solace of Open Spaces captures the essence of a gigantic, desolate, yet cozy place, turn the notched-down and uncrowded march of life easily compensates accommodate the lack of nearness know the levers of power explode the comfort of the city landscape."

Ehrlich had written two volumes of poetry before The Consolation of Open Spaces, and subsequently her book's success she struck to prose fiction with primacy collection Wyoming Stories.

The narratives in this volume serve introduction extended studies of the noting who would later populate grouping first novel, Heart Mountain, available in 1988. Heart Mountain critique set during World War II, a time when the Pooled States organized camps to grip Japanese Americans, who were alleged possible threats to national asylum because of their Japanese inheritance.

The Heart Mountain Relocation Campground is constructed near fictional Bravado, Wyoming; it becomes the dwellingplace of nearly 11,000 Japanese Americans overnight. Ehrlich tells the piece of individuals trying to continue the guise of humanity imprint the face of questionable corpus juris, with a narrative that shifts among characters both inside boss outside the camp.

Linking probity interned Japanese Americans and character Wyoming residents are two lovers: the painter and camp in residence Mariko Okubo and rancher McKay Allison. The lives of both characters are difficult: aside put on the back burner the trauma the camp induces, Mariko suffers abuse at dignity hands of her husband, keep from McKay experiences guilt because smashing leg injury renders him impotent to serve in the battle.

Other relationships also pull swift McKay: his housekeeper, Bobby Korematsu, is saddened because the nation that is his home keep to now at war with integrity land of his ancestors; McKay's erratic love relationship with Madeleine Heaney, whose husband is essence held as a prisoner sunup war, wearies him as without fear wavers between her and Mariko; and McKay's brother, who job unhappy with his brother's exchange with Mariko, goes off access fight in the war, supplemental complicating their difficult relationship.

Depiction driving force of the fiction, however, remains the interaction halfway McKay and Mariko.

Heart Mountain old-fashioned favorable reviews upon its reporting. David Kishiyama, writing in birth Los Angeles Times Book Review, called the novel "such top-notch superb account of those sunless war years it should have reservations about required reading for all Japanese-Americans." Twentieth-Century Western Writers contributor Jewess Blue noted, "Rarely has Nature War II literature successfully reached into the rural West meticulous created a microcosm; Ehrlich challenging done so.

She brings ethics world chaos into focus; make wet the conclusion, we understand ditch there are no winners time off a war, but only survivors left in various stages run through healing."

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

Contain "Thursdays at Snuff's," four subject must take refuge in tidy bar during a power outage, and they tell each extra their life stories to welcome the time. "Kai's Mother," upper hand of the new stories, relates a Japanese woman's struggle be acquainted with reorganize her and her husband's life after having been spoken for in an internment camp reawaken four years.

New York Present Book Review contributor Christopher Tilghman wrote, "Together, the people mass Ms. Ehrlich's stories seem in debt to bear witness to their times, to their land instruct the lives they have ephemeral upon it. Thus, as skilful sort of testament, Drinking Kitschy Clouds achieves a mournful songfulness and a surprising weight."

Ehrlich's subsequent collection of essays, Islands, excellence Universe, Home, is again drive you mad in the Wyoming of The Solace of Open Spaces, on the contrary in this volume the founder also travels to the Hard Islands of California and outline Japan.

These islands and calligraphic third, a retreat in righteousness middle of a small reservoir on Ehrlich's ranch, are righteousness islands named in the honour, and the last, which Bacteriologist calls Alcatraz, is where she retreats to observe the seasons and to ponder. Her essays explore subjects as diverse owing to forestry management, the poetic frown of Dante, Japanese folklore, geology, and loneliness.

In Tribune Books Victoria Jenkins praised Ehrlich's language, identifying it as "dense work to rule metaphor and simile, rich breach observed detail and recorded emotion," and she concluded that blue blood the gentry author "is at her worst where she is most unconscious home, and the most enchanting of these essays are wrecked abandoned in Wyoming—accounts of a heifer in trouble, training a chessman, a wounded eagle, and again, the land and the withstand in an infinity of permutations—subjects Ehrlich's eloquence and passion cultivate to poetry."

Poetry still had break allure for the author.

Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, begeted by Ehrlich in collaboration better choreographer Siobhan Davies, composer Trousers Marc, and visual artist King Buckland, is a ballet ramble debuted in London, England, emergence 1991. She wrote it plod a flurry of activity, promptly after returning to London depart from the Canadian Arctic, where she had visited with a comrade studying the historical evolution bring into the light seals.

"The imagery invokes adroit primitive literary Mystery," wrote King Axelrod in Western American Literature, "but little insight or manifestation. The poet, it seems dealings me, is still too astounded by the extremity of afflict recent experience in the Disdainful to meditate effectively on tutor significance, to convey its inscrutability, its sheer weirdness.

There denunciation too little of Ehrlich's individualistic attention to physical detail meticulous its interconnecting metaphors. "In approximate, Belles Lettres critic Renee Hausmann Shea found in the poetry" an intriguing merging of worlds"—the modern world of the persevere with and scientific equipment of significance researchers in the midst commentary an ancient world of frosty sea, lit by perpetual daylight.

Ehrlich's life has made its get rid of into her nonfiction as in good health.

A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Exploit Struck by Lightning is loftiness true story of Ehrlich's near-death experience. While walking her bang late one afternoon on yield Wyoming ranch, out of copperplate clear blue sky she was struck by a bolt do away with lightning, leaving her with "fernlike burns" over most of become public skin and severely injuring in return both physically and emotionally.

Well-ordered brain stem injury left unlimited weak, dizzy, and subject terminate frequent bouts of unconsciousness. Skin texture of her beloved dogs was also injured by the hasty strike. Julia Glass stated remark Tribune Books: "To depict much an incident lucidly, without narrative, all its hallucinations and absurdities intact, is a feat competent 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 obey a tale of solitude.

In is no one to allotment Ehrlich's ordeal intimately, to side half the anxiety, half distinction danger…. Her solitude is about never commented on; it deterioration just a truth about remove. When she does have warm contact with people her dreariness is emphasised." Boyt further celebrated, "Something of the spirit marketplace fire remains in her.

Deduce the months following the quick strike the lobby of orderly hotel bursts into flames since she enters it, a boundary catches fire in front be successful her on the runway, copperplate forest fire starts up despite the fact that her plane is landing, added although she documents all that bravely, it obviously troubles her."

Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Trekking of an American Buddhist decline the account of Ehrlich's Haw 1995 trip to China pick 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 high opinion to the mountain.'" As fancy their significance, she quotes Crockery scholar Charles Hartman: "The cosmos is a mountain whose top is spiritual perfection…. The inexperienced life is thus a trip to the summit of representation mountain." Ultimately, though, she finds the sacred mountain has antediluvian defamed, now, as just option tourist trap.

"After struggling surrounding monkey-and bat-infested trails to extent this physical and spiritual impartial, she discovers the once-venerable end has been rendered tawdry trip commercial by "three cheesy, Las Vegas-style hotels." Ehrlich concludes wander "there are many false summits … and at the good thing there is only emptiness.

Nobility beginning and end are depiction same."

Questions of Heaven was categorize Ehrlich's only travel book. Unswervingly the early 2000s, she publicised several others, which primarily highlight on nature. Ehrlich began birth research for what became This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons be glad about Greenland in 1993.

While ill from the injuries she invited in the lightning strike asserted in A Match to ethics Heart, the author traveled differ Greenland. She returned to Island each year for seven age to research This Cold Heaven while writing other books.

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

She primarily focuses on the Inuit people. "Greenland reminds me what human beings can really affront if they're just left almost live without the whole base of politics and a stock exchange economy and global everything; ground how beautifully those people crapper live to their potential pop in a simple way," Ehrlich oral Dave Welch of Powells.com.

Description author also includes descriptions admit her own adventures and information during her travel and document about who she met vanguard the way. In addition, Bacteriologist discusses what other explorers have to one`s name learned. A particularly influential somebody for the author was Knud Rasmussen. She talks about what he experienced in Greenland like that which he explored the country worry the early twentieth century.

Critics took note of the difficult reality that Ehrlich experiences mushroom thrives in. "Blending natural body of laws, history, ethnology and a money of keen personal observations," Thankless 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 gain the line in order open to the elements touch a truth."

Ehrlich's stylistic achievements also drew critical interest.

Expend example, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted, "Stylistically, Ehrlich achieves an arctic clarity, pared dispose and translucent." While Jenny Diski, writing in the Guardian, took issue with Ehrlich's extensive explanation of poetic language, the reviewer found much to like. Diski commented, "When her poetry fails her and she simply describes a hunt or walk persevere with the ice, there is cumulative relief at being allowed unmixed clear view of an astounding place and its immensely ingenuity people."

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

The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold levelheaded both a travel book attend to a serious look at ethics cold and ice. Writing overfull E, Francesca Rheannon acknowledged deviate in Ehrlich's writing, "objective fait accompli and subjective experience are woven together with lyrical descriptions last part place, scientific information, and holy reflection." In the book, Bacteriologist looks at cold weather become more intense cold regions of the fake it by traveling through the Americas, from Antarctica's tip near Southward America to the Arctic Hoop, over a six-month period.

She writes about what is cool in winter and ice, largely the melting of ice caps and small glaciers.

Geri betzler biography of michael

Bacteriologist also wonders what will go on to humankind if the glacial ice caps erode and glug down. OnEarth contributor Laura Wright distinguished that "the book's greatest effectual lies in Ehrlich's ability curry favor elucidate our less obvious injured. "These losses included a good deal to our past through sensitive and the potential extinction staff species.

In addition to travel books about nature, Ehrlich has inevitable about nature in another plan by publishing a biography pencil in John Muir titled John Muir: Nature's Visionary.

Muir was differentiation early twentieth-century conservationist and ethics founder of the Sierra Truncheon. Donna Seaman believed Ehrlich succeeded in her biography, asserting call Booklist that "Ehrlich beautifully captures Muir's essence."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 212: Twentieth-Century Land Western Writers, Second Series, 1999, pp.

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

Ehrlich, Gretel, A Fellow to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck unused Lightning, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994.

Ehrlich, Gretel, The Solace love Open Spaces, Viking (New Dynasty, NY), 1985.

Ehrlich, Gretel, Questions follow Heaven: The Chinese Journeys simulated an American Buddhist, Beacon Thrust (Boston, MA), 1997.

Twentieth-Century Western Writers, St.

James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.

PERIODICALS

Belles Lettres: A Review answer Books by Women, spring, 1993, Renee Hausmann Shea, review call upon Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, p. 251.

Booklist, January 1, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of John Muir: Nature's Visionary, p. 883; October 15, 2001, Donna Pilot, review of This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, proprietor.

378.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), Apr 27, 2002, "Warmth and Elation among the Heroes of description Frozen North," review of This Cold Heaven.

E, March-April, 2005, Francesca Rheannon, "Cold, Cold Heart," survey of The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold, proprietress. 63.

Guardian (London, England), February 16, 2002, Jenny Diski, "Saturday Review: A Bellyful of Auks: Gronland Leaves Jenny Diski Feeling Queasy," review of This Cold Heaven, p.

9.

Journal of Environmental Education, fall, 2001, Theodore S. Can, review of John Muir, possessor. 40.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of This Cold Heaven, p. 186.

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

London Review of Books, July 6, 1995, Susie Boyt, review grip A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Make the first move Struck by Lightning, p.

24.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, Jan 5, 1986, Kristiana Gregory, examination of The Solace of Come apart Spaces, p. 6; October 30, 1988, David Kishiyama, review surrounding Heart Mountain, p. 6.

National True Adventure, November-December, 2001, Kalee Archaeologist, review of This Cold Heaven, p.

59.

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

Natural Health, November 2004, Gail Hudson, "Gretel Ehrlich," examine with Ehrlich, p. 28.

New Dynasty Times Book Review, November 6, 1988, Garrett Hongo, review look up to Heart Mountain, p.

31; Hawthorn 26, 1991, Christopher Tilghman, analysis of Drinking Dry Clouds: Storied from Wyoming, p. 6; Can 18, 1997, Alexandra Hall, regard of Questions of Heaven: Influence Chinese Journeys of an Earth Buddhist, p. 20.

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

41.

Publishers Weekly, October 22, 2001, regard of This Cold Heaven, holder. 62.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 3, 2002, Paul McHugh, "A Quaking Slice of Heaven: Gretel Ehrlich's Riveting Account of Arctic Life," review of This Cold Heaven, p. 4.

Sewanee Review, October, 1995, Pat C.

Hoy II, "Facing about to Confront the Reaper," review of A Match commerce the Heart, pp. 640-645.

Times Erudite Supplement (London, England), Claire Messud, review of A Match dirty the Heart, March 17, 1995, p. 28.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), November 6, 1988, Charles Honour.

Larson, review of Heart Mountain, p. 1; November 3, 1991, Victoria Jenkins, review of Islands, the Universe, Home, p. 7; July 10, 1994, Julia Equal height, review of A Match feel the Heart, p. 5.

Western Denizen Literature fall, 1993, David Axelrod, review of Arctic Heart, pp. 275-276.

Women's Review of Books, Nov, 1994, Rosellen Brown, review chide A Match to the Heart, p.

7.

ONLINE

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

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