The people who use Patagonia gear have explored the furthest extremities of wildnessfrom the icy waters of the Labrador Sea to the baking hot, vertical granite of El Capitan. Patagonia: Notes from the Field delivers an intense glimpse of those front lines in a spectacular collection of essays and photographs commissioned for Patagonia. Authors such as Paul Theroux, Gretel Ehrlich, Russell Chatham, Rick Ridgeway, and Tom McGuane offer first-hand perspectivesoften off-beat and sometimes unsettlingon our relationship to the natural world. Their words capture life-threatening moments and sudden insights into the soul of a sport. The accompanying images may command silence (the tiny silhouettes of climbers on a distant snowy ridge) or elicit a whoop of joy (a kayaker dropping off a 20-foot waterfall). Editor Nora Gallagher has collected the best essays and images from Patagonia's award-winning catalog and melded them with newly commissioned material to create an intelligent, powerful, and vital portrait of "life out there." Patagonia: Notes from the Field will appeal to adventurers, travelers, and dreamers everywhere.
Nora Gallagher's novel Changing Light has received outstanding reviews in the New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. It is one of three novels chosen by Borders for its March-April Original Voices program. Her memoir Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith received outstanding reviews from the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times among many others and was a bestseller. Annie Dillard called it ' a wonderful book' and said, 'Nora Gallagher...describes church life and spiritual life with absolute accuracy." Her second memoir, Practicing Resurrection, received outstanding reviews and was a finalist for Beliefnet Book of the Year.
She was born in New Mexico, and spent her childhood in its high deserts. After college she worked as a free-lance magazine journalist in the United States, Nicaragua, and Czechoslovakia. Ms. Gallagher is particularly interested in what happens to ordinary people in the shadow of larger events.
Her essays, book reviews, op-eds and journalism have appeared in many publications including The New York Times Magazine, DoubleTake, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Utne Reader, The Village Voice, Mother Jones, and The Los Angeles Times.
Ms. Gallagher has received fellowships from the Wesleyan Writers Conference, Blue Mountain Center,the MacDowell Colony; and Mesa Refuge.
A sermon is collected in Sermons that Work (Morehouse Publishing March 2003) and a poem in the anthology, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond.
She is licensed to preach by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, is preacher-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara and serves on the advisory board of the Yale Divinity School. She lives in California and New York City with her husband, the novelist and poet, Vincent Stanley. They are the godparents of five children.
