Janisse Ray

Ray published a book of poetry, A House of Branches (2010) and has been a contributor to Audubon, Orion and other magazines, as well as a commentator for NPR's Living on Earth. An environmental activist, she has campaigned on behalf of the Altamaha River and the Moody Swamp.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2005.

In Wild Card Quilt (2003) she relates her experiences moving back home to Georgia with her son after attending graduate school in Montana. Pinhook (2005) tells the story of Pinhook Swamp, the land that connects the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and Osceola National Forest in Florida. Drifting into Darien, published in 2011, describes her experiences on and knowledge about the Altamaha River, which runs from middle Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean at Darien.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (2000) recounts Ray's 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 also was chosen for the "All Georgia Reading the Same Book" project by the Georgia Center for the Book.

Ray was born in Baxley, Georgia, the daughter of Franklin D. and Lee Ada Branch Ray. From 1980 to 1982, she attended North Georgia College. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Florida State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Montana.

Janisse Ray (born February 2, 1962) is an American writer, naturalist, and environmental activist.