Janisse Ray

Who is Janisse Ray?

Janisse Ray is an American writer, naturalist, and environmental activist.

She attended North Georgia College, 1980–82; Florida State University, B.A., 1984; and the University of Montana, M.F.A., 1997.

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 with her son after attending graduate school in Montana.

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 book, 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.