George Bristol, of Austin, was a consultant on the Ken Burns/Dayton
Duncan PBS series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The 2009 winner of
the Pugsley Medal honoring champions of parks and conservation, he was also a
writer-in-residence at the Thinking Like a Mountain Foundation in Fort Davis,
Texas. Bristol was also winner of the 2000 PEN Texas Literary Award for Poetry,
the First Annual Texas Land & People Award (2007), the Terry Hershey Award
(2008), and the Nature Conservancy of Texas Lifetime Achievement Award (2008).
In 2008, he received a leadership award from the Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department.
TAMUP: What or who inspired you to write your book?
GB: The inspirational who is a list as numerous as the chapters in the
book. From childhood to the present I have been blessed with people and places
that added something special to the mix that is George Bristol. But,
specifically I must give credit to Dick and Joanne Bartlett who set up a
writer-in-residence program in the remoteness of West Texas. I was fortunate
enough to be selected for a two month stent. That gave me the time to pull a
number of pieces I had written over a period of time into a coherent whole with
a stated goal of tying them to my work on parklands, national and state, and
conservation. That was easy to do, because I have felt over time that events,
mentors, places and people all contributed to my concentrated work in conservation
over the past 15 years or so. What success I have had is because I was given and taught the tools to compete in
any situation that called for a solid knowledge of organization, fundraising
and respect for ideas of others.
TAMUP: What are you looking forward to most about being one of the 200+
authors featured at the Texas Book Festival?
GB: To be able to move freely among the many great writers who will
> attend the Texas Book Festival in 2012 is gratification enough for being
selected as a featured author. I have gone to most of the Festivals over the
years and often longed to go up to a writer, but was thwarted by time and
schedule. Now I will have many opportunities to do so and I plan to take full
advantage of the situation.
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