Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich is an American travel writer, novelist, and essayist.

Born in Santa Barbara, California, she studied at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She began to write full time in 1978, living on a Wyoming ranch, after the death of a loved one. Her first book was "The Solace of Open Spaces", published in 1984. Annie Dillard commended it. "The Solace of Open Spaces" is a collection of essays written by her while she was in Wyoming. describing her love for the region.

Her first novel, also set in Wyoming, was "Heart Mountain" (1987), about a community being invaded by an internment camp for Japanese Americans.

One of Ehrlich's most beloved books is a volume of creative nonfiction essays called "Islands, The Universe, Home."Her characteristic style of merging intense, vivid factual observations of nature with a wryly mystical personal voice is evident in this text. Other books include "This Cold Heaven" and two volumes of poetry.

In 1991 Ehrlich was hit by lightning. She was incapacitated for several years, and she wrote a book about the experience, "A Match to the Heart", which was published in 1994. Since 1993, she has traveled extensively, especially through Greenland and western China.

Her work is frequently anthologised, including in "The Nature Reader". She has received many grants and created a ballet for the South Bank Theatre in London.

External links

* [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tturb/00268/trb-00268p1.html Author papers (1923-2005) at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University]