Janisse Ray
Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow
Writer, naturalist, and activist

Wednesday, November 14th
7:00pm
Eben Holden

What Counts as Progress?

Public lecture and reading, followed by a book signing

This is a look at the things that matter the most to us and what we must do to hold on to them. Agrodiversity, especially, is profoundly threatened: she will talk about what is happening and what can be done.

This lecture will include a reading from her book The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food. 

The following books will be available for purchase at the bookstore and the night of the lecture.  Janisse will be doing a book signing after the lecture.

The Seed Underground:  A Growing Revolution to Save Food
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
A House of Branches: Poems
Pinhook:  Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land

Writer, naturalist, and activist Janisse Ray is a seed-saver, seed-exchanger, and seed-banker, and has gardened for twenty-five years. She is the author of several books, including Pinhook and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a New York Times Notable Book. Her most recent book, The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food is a look at seed sovereignty and the gardens where vintage varieties of fruits and vegetables are being curated. Ray calls these gardeners "quiet revolutionaries."

Ray is on the faculty of Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program, and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She has won a Southern Booksellers Award for Poetry, a Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction, an American Book Award, the Southern Environmental Law Center Award for Outstanding Writing, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

Janisse attempts to live a simple, sustainable life on Red Earth Farm in southern Georgia with her husband, Raven Waters. 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.