Lecture: Janisse Ray: “The Art of a Place Called Longleaf”

Longleaf pine’s most ardent supporter, author and environmentalist Janisse Ray, will be at the Georgia Museum of Art in person to celebrate the exhibition “Kristin Leachman: Longleaf Lines," on view through February 5, 2023. In her heart-centered way, Janisse will lay out what we had in this inspiring but endangered ecosystem, what happened to it and what we’re doing to fix it. Longleaf happens to be her place, but we all have places, and she will talk about many different ways to lean down and kiss the ground — how to find art wherever you are and how to use those visions to transform our world.

Janisse Ray is a writer exploring the intersection of landscape and story. Her first book, “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood,” a memoir about growing up on a junkyard, chronicled the disappearing longleaf pine ecosystem of the southeastern U.S. It won many awards and was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Book All Georgians Should Read. Janisse went on to publish many books of literary nonfiction and two collections of poetry. In 2021 Trinity University Press published her collection of essays, “Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonder in a World Beyond Humans.” This fall she releases her first novel, “The Woods of Fannin County.” Janisse has won a Pushcart Prize, an American Book Award and a Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, among many others, and has been inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She lives and works on an organic farm in the coastal plains.

Co-sponsored by the Oconee River Land Trust.