Austin Peay State University
Room 120 of the Art + Design Building
601 College St
Clarksville, TN 37044
United States
Free and open to the public.
Kelly J. Beard, 2017 Zone 3 Press Creative Nonfiction Book Award winner, and Janisse Ray (Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, 2015), writer, naturalist and activist, will read from their works at 8 p.m. Feb. 21 at Austin Peay State University.
The reading – part of the Zone 3 Reading Series – is free and open to the public in Room 120 of the Art + Design Building.
Janisse Ray
Writer, naturalist, and activist Janisse Ray is the author of six books, including the widely acclaimed memoirs Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt. A recipient of numerous honors, including an American Book Award, she lives in rural Georgia and lectures widely.
This contemporary classic has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, this memoir catalogues a people and their home—a junkyard in the south, and the forests surrounding it.
In these short pieces—sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking—the author chronicles her return to a hometown in need of repair, physical and otherwise, after seventeen years away. Syrup boils, alligator trapping, and fighting to save the town’s school: this book crafts a compelling argument for the possibilities of rural community.