where the story gets wild
About
Into the Trackless Wild | Janisse Ray is an American writer who explores the borderland
of nature & culture. She has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Bookseller Award, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, Nautilus Award, & Eisenberg Award, among others; and has been inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Her bestselling first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, was a New York Times Notable. Her recently published eighth, Wild Spectacle, won the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, which carries a $10K prize. Janisse serves on the editorial board of terrain.org & is an honorary member of the Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment. She earned an MFA from the University of Montana & has received 2 honorary doctorates.
Janisse lives & works inland from Savannah, Georgia.
of nature & culture. She has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Bookseller Award, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, Nautilus Award, & Eisenberg Award, among others; and has been inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Her bestselling first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, was a New York Times Notable. Her recently published eighth, Wild Spectacle, won the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, which carries a $10K prize. Janisse serves on the editorial board of terrain.org & is an honorary member of the Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment. She earned an MFA from the University of Montana & has received 2 honorary doctorates.
Janisse lives & works inland from Savannah, Georgia.
2022
June 4 | Center for a Sustainable Coast, 25th Anniversary, Melon Bluff, Midway, GA
June 12-19 | Bread Loaf Environmental Conference, with Megan Mayhew Bergman, Middlebury, VT
July 23 | Fayette County Public Library, 2 pm, Fayetteville, GA
Aug. 28 | Ashantilly Center, 3 pm, Darien, GA
Aug. 31 | Rotary Club, 11:30, Fernandina Beach, FL
Aug. 31 | Story & Song Bookstore, 4 pm, Fernandina Beach, FL
Sept. 11 | "Arts at the Confluence" Conversation on the Arts, Environment, and Activism, First Congregational Church of Atlanta, with Margaret Renkl & Billy Renkl, organized by Pearl McHaney & Jane Thorpe, 2 pm, Atlanta, GA
Oct. 19 | Cherokee Garden Library Ashley Wright McIntyre Lecture Series, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA
Nov. 15 | Literary Guild of St. Simons, organized by Cary Knapp, 10 am, St. Simons Island, GA
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2022 PAST
Jan. 4 -- Northwest Illinois Audubon Society, 7 pm CT, Illinois
Jan. 18-20 -- Reporting trip to tour longleaf, North Carolina
Jan. 24 -- Join the Book Club Discussion, Greensleeves of Environmental Education Alliance, virtual, Georgia
Jan. 26 -- Mainspring Conservation Trust (virtual lecture), Franklin, NC
Jan. 28 -- Western Foundation of Vertebrae Zoology, 6 pm PT (virtual), Southern California
Feb. 21 -- OLLI (virtual), Athens, GA
Feb. 24 -- Spring Island Trust, Okatie, SC
March 1 -- Island Wildlife Chapter (Cape Fear), North Carolina Wildlife Federation, 12-1 (virtual) North Carolina
March 4 -- Georgia Collegiate Honors Council, "Home Grown Honors: Arts & Sciences of Georgia." ABAC, Tifton, GA
March 6 -- "March Forth" with Drew Lanham & Jonathan Haupt, Pat Conroy Literary Center, Beaufort, SC
March 10 -- Lenten Poetry and Organ Concert, featuring Janisse Ray & organist Andrew Galuska, Vero Beach, FL
March 11 -- "Here's to the Wildness We Love," Reading, Environmental Learning Center. Vero Beach, FL
March 12 -- "Write Your Own Story," Writing Workshop, Pole Barn, Laura Riding Jackson House. Vero Beach, FL
March 29 -- Moon Lake Library (virtual) 7:30 ET, Moon Lake, Alabama
April 2 -- Rural Writing Institute, with Kathryn Aalto (virtual), England
April 6-7 -- Lander University, Greenwood, SC
June 12-19 | Bread Loaf Environmental Conference, with Megan Mayhew Bergman, Middlebury, VT
July 23 | Fayette County Public Library, 2 pm, Fayetteville, GA
Aug. 28 | Ashantilly Center, 3 pm, Darien, GA
Aug. 31 | Rotary Club, 11:30, Fernandina Beach, FL
Aug. 31 | Story & Song Bookstore, 4 pm, Fernandina Beach, FL
Sept. 11 | "Arts at the Confluence" Conversation on the Arts, Environment, and Activism, First Congregational Church of Atlanta, with Margaret Renkl & Billy Renkl, organized by Pearl McHaney & Jane Thorpe, 2 pm, Atlanta, GA
Oct. 19 | Cherokee Garden Library Ashley Wright McIntyre Lecture Series, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA
Nov. 15 | Literary Guild of St. Simons, organized by Cary Knapp, 10 am, St. Simons Island, GA
------------
2022 PAST
Jan. 4 -- Northwest Illinois Audubon Society, 7 pm CT, Illinois
Jan. 18-20 -- Reporting trip to tour longleaf, North Carolina
Jan. 24 -- Join the Book Club Discussion, Greensleeves of Environmental Education Alliance, virtual, Georgia
Jan. 26 -- Mainspring Conservation Trust (virtual lecture), Franklin, NC
Jan. 28 -- Western Foundation of Vertebrae Zoology, 6 pm PT (virtual), Southern California
Feb. 21 -- OLLI (virtual), Athens, GA
Feb. 24 -- Spring Island Trust, Okatie, SC
March 1 -- Island Wildlife Chapter (Cape Fear), North Carolina Wildlife Federation, 12-1 (virtual) North Carolina
March 4 -- Georgia Collegiate Honors Council, "Home Grown Honors: Arts & Sciences of Georgia." ABAC, Tifton, GA
March 6 -- "March Forth" with Drew Lanham & Jonathan Haupt, Pat Conroy Literary Center, Beaufort, SC
March 10 -- Lenten Poetry and Organ Concert, featuring Janisse Ray & organist Andrew Galuska, Vero Beach, FL
March 11 -- "Here's to the Wildness We Love," Reading, Environmental Learning Center. Vero Beach, FL
March 12 -- "Write Your Own Story," Writing Workshop, Pole Barn, Laura Riding Jackson House. Vero Beach, FL
March 29 -- Moon Lake Library (virtual) 7:30 ET, Moon Lake, Alabama
April 2 -- Rural Writing Institute, with Kathryn Aalto (virtual), England
April 6-7 -- Lander University, Greenwood, SC
PAPERBACK RELEASE AUG 2022
WILD
SPECTACLE
Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans
Ray repeatedly sets out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and movement toward living more wisely. In Ray's worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness. Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.
Please support your favorite indie bookshop.
WILD
SPECTACLE
Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans
Ray repeatedly sets out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and movement toward living more wisely. In Ray's worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness. Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.
Please support your favorite indie bookshop.
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PUBLISHED 2021
PRAISE FOR RED LANTERNS
Janisse Ray gently prods us, through the beauty of her imagery and language, to open our eyes to the wonders of the natural world and to our purpose and place in it. This book is nothing short of a great blessing.
--David Bottoms, Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch
With great and rare heart, Red Lanterns sings with soil, grit, and an integrity of vision and practice—I love the poems in this book.
--Thorpe Moeckel, Making a Map of the River
Ray has the rare talent of melding herself with the sounds and motions, the insistent, conflicting mayhem of the life and weather around and within her. Red Lanterns is an evocative and lyrical feast of language indeed.
--Pattiann Rogers, Quickening Fields
Ray says My heart is a culvert in this debut collection of poems—through which internal waters run crystalline, jubilant like a sudden red bloom of cardinal in the dooryard quince, or turbid & fierce in the overflow of storm.
--Sean Sexton, May Darkness Restore
In the glow of Red Lanterns, sicklefin redhorse and river trout shine like raw jewels left, miraculously, to adorn the earth. These poems commune in our shared grievances even as they gather papery red seedpods into wide open hands and offer them up like a heart.
--Amy Wright, Everything in the Universe
