Revery Will Do: Imagination and Conservation on Montana’s Great Plains

Corrie Williamson, author, teacher, naturalist, and Community Outreach Director at American Prairie, will blend poetry, history, and restoration ecology in a presentation that travels across time, geography, and literature. She will be introduced by Stephenie Ambrose-Tubbs, daughter of the late Stephen E. Ambrose, for whom the lecture is named.

Williamson, who grew up in the same small Virginia town as William Clark’s first wife, Julia Hancock, will share her connections to the history and landscape of the Corps of Discovery and how it led her to Montana and to her work connecting storytelling, conservation, and communities. Her lecture, part poetry-reading, will include work from her award-winning collections of poems, as well as other important literary touchpoints and perspectives related to the Great Northern Plains’ history and habitat. 

​Williamson will discuss her work at the conservation NGO American Prairie, and their mission to connect, protect, and share 3.2 million acres of Montana’s grasslands, and how this work extends beyond habitat and wildlife conservation to intertwine with the stories we tell about the past, what we can imagine and hope for the future, and how these together shape our paths forward. 

Visit https://www.corriewilliamson.com.

​Please visit https://www.lclibfoundation.org/stephen-ambrose-memorial-lecture to learn more about Corrie Williamson, her books of poetry, and about the Ambrose Lecture.

About Stephenie Ambrose-Tubbs: Stephenie Ambrose-Tubbs is author of The Lewis and Clark Companion; An Encyclopedic Guide to the Voyage of Discovery, and Why Sacagawea Deserves the Day Off; Lessons from the Lewis and Clark Trail.  She lectures nationally about her experiences and observations on the Lewis and Clark Trail, which she first followed in 1976 with her father, bestselling author Stephen Ambrose.

In addition to working with the Lewis and Clark Trail Adventures, Ambrose-Tubbs serves as chair on the Lewis and Clark Trust Inc. a non-profit aimed at preserving the Trail and all of its aspects through conservation and education. She recently had the pleasure of working with National Geographic/ Linblad‘s ship, the Sea Lion, on the Columbia River. She is an emeritus board member for American Prairie and holds two degrees in History from the University of Montana.