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| William E. Glassley | |
William E. Glassley, author of the award-winning book A Wilder Time, died March 19. He was 75. Glassley's early love of surfing "inspired his lifelong love of the natural world. His subsequent careers as a geologist, educator and natural history writer drew energy from his belief that a fundamental essence of our humanity resides in the wilderness," his obituary noted.
"We at Bellevue Literary Press are saddened by the news of Bill Glassley's death while traveling to his beloved Greenland to continue his research there," said Erika Goldman, publisher and editorial director. "A geologist whose commitment to wilderness preservation informed his lyrical writing and profound humanism, he was always thoughtful, cheerful, and considerate of all of us who worked with him on his prizewinning book, A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice. We feel honored to have known him and will miss him terribly."
Glassley collaborated for more than 30 years with Danish colleagues researching the geologic history of Greenland. The expeditions he took inspired him to write A Wilder Time, which won the 2019 Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize.
He also wrote the textbook Geothermal Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment, which is in its second edition and continues to be an important text for the renewable energy world. At the time of his death, he had just completed his third book, a collection of essays.