UCSB Arts & Lectures presents author and activist Terry Tempest Williams in Conversation with Pico Iyer, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 13 at UCSB Campbell Hall.

Williams joins Iyer to explore the role of imagination in seeking justice and stewarding the future of the planet.

In her book “The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary,” Williams offers a testament to the power of witness and extends an invitation to engage more deeply with one another and the living world, organizers said.

“A fearless voice for ecological awareness and positive social change, Williams blends the lyricism of a poet with the urgency of a citizen advocate,” according to Arts & Lectures. “From wilderness to Congress and from Utah to Rwanda, her work illuminates the deep ties between environmentalism and human rights.

“This provocative dialogue promises to explore what power could look like when understood as not only within us and between us as humans, but also extending beyond our species.”

Tickets are $25-$35 general public; $10 UCSB students with current student ID. For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535 or buy online at www.artsandlectures.ucsb.edu.

Williams has been called “a citizen writer,” a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life.

A naturalist and advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice.

“So here is my question,” Williams says. “What might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?”

Williams, like her writing, cannot be categorized, event organizers said. She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues; been a guest at the White House; has camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses; and worked as “a barefoot artist” in Rwanda.

Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Williams is the author of the environmental literature classics including: “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place;” “An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field;” “Desert Quartet;” “Leap;” “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert; The Open Space of Democracy; “Finding Beauty in a Broken World;” and “When Women Were Birds.”

In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, its highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West.

She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction.

Williams is currently writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School.