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. Her work has been widely taught and anthologized, and has received an American Book Award, a Southern Book Critics Circle Award, a Southern Booksellers Award, and many others. 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, Ray was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She lives in rural southern Georgia and continues to teach and lecture widely.
Like this author? Sign up for occasional updates
Books by Janisse Ray
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.
Related Media
