Janisse Ray has so much soul and love for the world that I could not help but feel overwhelmed by her sacred words on this inspired show. Transparent and authentic this wise woman touched my heart and also lit up my mind with ideas for a better tomorrow. Please take a listen and allow the experience of her to wash over you.
Writer, naturalist and activist Janisse Ray is author of six books. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and has been awarded two honorary doctorates, one from Unity College in Maine and the other from LaGrange College in Georgia. In 2015 she was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Her work has been translated and published in France and Turkey. She lives in rural southern Georgia.
Her first book of creative nonfiction rocketed Janisse onto the literary scene. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, was published by Milkweed Editions in 1999. Besides being a plea to protect and restore the glorious pine flatwoods of the South, the book looks hard at family, mental illness, poverty, and fundamentalist religion. Essayist Wendell Berry called the book “well done and deeply moving.” Anne Raver of The New York Times said of Janisse Ray, “The forests of the South find their Rachel Carson.”
Janisse’s second book, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, about rural community, was published by Milkweed Editions in early 2003. The third, Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, the story of a 750,000-acre wildland corridor between south Georgia and north Florida, was published by Chelsea Green in 2005. Drifting into Darien, a personal and natural history of the Altamaha River, was released in fall 2011 by the University of Georgia Press.
Her latest is a nonfiction book on open-pollinated seeds, The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food (Chelsea Green), published in 2012 to wide acclaim.
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