Words on Fire

Learn About the Speakers

Bill Anthony retired as District Ranger of the Sisters Ranger District in 2011 after three decades in the U.S. Forest Service. Anthony’s first job as District Ranger was helping to write the Deschutes National Forest’s first Forest Plan, a long-range policy and planning document required under the then-new National Environmental Policy Act. In his fourteen years as District Ranger, Anthony built bridges between the Forest Service and environmental groups that resulted in collaborative restoration projects such as the Metolius demonstration project, a large-scale restoration effort that thinned out crowded and unhealthy areas around the Metolius River.

Colleen Morton Busch received her M.F.A. in poetry but writes and publishes fiction and nonfiction as well. A yoga student and Zen practitioner, Busch is the author of “Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire” (Penguin, 2011), a day-by-day account of the defense of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center against massive wildfires in summer 2008. Her work has appeared in Yoga Journal, where she was a senior editor, Tricycle: A Buddhist Review, Shambhala Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and numerous literary magazines, including Willow Springs, Manoa, New Orleans Review, The Big Ugly Review and Yellow Silk. She blogs for the Huffington Post and lives in Northern California with her husband.

Timothy Ingalsbee is the Executive Director of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE). He is also the director of the Western Fire Ecology Center (WFEC) for the American Lands Alliance, which does research, analysis, education and advocacy on fire-related federal forest management issues. Ingalsbee earned a Ph.D. in environmental sociology from the University of Oregon in 1995 and has worked as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California; Willamette University in Salem, Oregon; and the University of Oregon in Eugene. Ingalsbee was a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service during the 1980s.

Mary Beth Leigh is the coordinator of arts and humanities integrative activities at Bonanza Creek LTER. She's a faculty member in microbiology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and also a modern dancer/choreographer with the company Deliquescent Designs. She has assisted in organizing field workshops for artists and scientists that have culminated in two performing arts events and a visual arts exhibit on the theme of climate change in Alaska, under the title In a Time of Change. She also taught an integrative course in Climate Change and Creative Expression at a predominantly Alaska Native charter high school in Fairbanks that culminated in an original student performance combining dance, theater, poetry and climate change science.

Stephen Pyne is one of the world's foremost experts on the history and management of fire. Pyne spent fifteen seasons as a wildland firefighter at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park between 1967 and 1981. Since the publication of his second book, “Fire in America” in 1982, he has written at least a dozen other books on wildfire, including “Tending Fire: Coping With America's Wildfires” (Island Press, 2004) and “Fire: A Brief History” (University of Washington Press and British Museum, 2001). He is a professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.

Karin Riley became fascinated with wildfire when the Big Bar Fire burned toward her family's land in northern California in 1999. She noticed that mass media's negative narrative about fire didn't describe what she saw on the land. She recently completed a PhD in Geosciences at University of Montana, where her studies focused on wildfire. Karin works for Systems for Environmental Management and is stationed at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab.

Sarah Trainor is a Research Assistant Professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Trainor conducts research related to human-dimensions of climate change in Alaska, specializing in communicating scientific information about climate change and its impacts to diverse stakeholder audiences. She holds an M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (2002) in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in Philosophy and Environmental Studies from Mount Holyoke College (1992). She is serving as project PI for the JFSPfunded grant “In a Time of Change: The Art of Fire,” a multidisciplinary collaborative project that has brought together artists, firefighters and forestry managers in Alaska.