This week's special guest is Janisse Ray being interviewed in perfect timing for this weekend's call to action with the
MARCH AGAINST MONSANTO Direct Actions happening all around the globe. We will speak to Janisse about her books, seed saving, growing, sustainability and so much more. DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW!
CLICK HERE to get to the show and archive:
The show starts at 10PM EDT, Friday May 24th, 2013.
This will be a pre-recorded interview.
Please direct questions to Ms. Ray's email address noted below.
Janisse Ray's Bio:
Writer, naturalist, and activist Janisse Ray is author of five books of literary nonfiction and a collection of nature poetry. Her most recent book, The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food is a look at what’s happening to seeds, which is to say the future of food. The book has won the American Society of Journalists & Authors’ Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Makes a Difference and an American Horticultural Society Book Award.
Ray is on the faculty of Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana and in 2007 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Unity College in Maine.
Her first book, 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. The book won a Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction 1999, an American Book Award 2000, the Southern Environmental Law Center 2000 Award for Outstanding Writing, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award 2000. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read. Besides a plea to protect and restore the glorious pine flatwoods, the book is a hard look 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, “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 between south Georgia and north Florida) was published by Chelsea Green in 2005. Her first book of poetry, A House of Branches, came out in 2010 from Wind Publication and won a Southern Booksellers Award for Poetry 2011. Drifting Into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River -- a lovesong and a call to action -- was released by UGA Press in 2011.
The author has been visiting professor at Coastal Carolina University, scholar-in-residence at Florida Gulf Coast University, and writer-in-residence at Keene State College and Green Mountain College. She was the John & Renee Grisham writer-in-residence 2003-04 at the University of Mississippi. Janisse attempts to live a simple, sustainable life on Red Earth Farm in southern Georgia with her husband and daughter. Janisse is an organic gardener, tender of farm animals, slow-food cook, and seed-saver. She lectures widely on nature, community, agriculture, wildness, sustainability, and the politics of wholeness.
Get in touch with Janisse:
912.557.1053
wildfire1491@yahoo.com
