Wild Spectacle

Janisse Ray

About Janisse Ray

is an American writer, naturalist, and environmental activist.Her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, recounts her experiences growing up in a junkyard, the daughter of a poor, white, fundamentalist Christian family. The book interweaves family history and memoir with natural history writing—specifically, descriptions of the ecology of the vanishing longleaf pine forests that once blanketed much of the South. The book won the American Book Award, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and the Southern Environmental Law Center Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern environment. It was also chosen for the "All Georgia Reading the Same Book" project by the Georgia Center for the Book.Ray's second book, Wild Card Quilt, recounts her experiences of moving back home to Georgia. Her third book, Pinhook, tells the story of Pinhook Swamp, the land that connects the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and Osceola National Forest in Florida.Her fourth, Drifting into Darien, published in 2011, describes her experiences on and knowledge about the mighty Altamaha River, which runs from middle Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean at Darien.Ray published a book of poetry, A House of Branches, in 2010, and has been a contributor to The Bitter Southerner, Gravy, and many other magazines.She was inducted in 2015 into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She was born in Baxley, Georgia, the daughter of Franklin D. and Lee Ada Branch Ray. She has a son, Silas Ausable, and a daughter, Skye Larkin....

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