Writer, naturalist and activist Janisse Ray is the author of six books of literary nonfiction and poetry. She has won the Southern Booksellers Award, the Southeastern Booksellers Award, and an American Book Award. Ray lives and works on a farm in Baxley, GA.
"""The forests of the southeast find their Rachel Carson . . . . In Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, part memoir, part clarion call to save the longleaf pine, she casts a loving but unflinching eye on growing up poor and fundamentalist in southeast Georgia.” Anne Raver, New York Times Suffused with the same history-haunted sense of loss that imprints so much of the South and its literature. What sets Ecology of a Cracker Childhood apart is the ambitious and arresting mission implied in its title. Ray's passion for preserving this unsung landscape is heartfelt and refreshing.” Tony Horwitz, New York Times Book Review The gorgeously written Ecology of a Cracker Childhood combines memoir and nature writing in such a way as to take the reader there, to the longleaf pine forests of south Georgia before it was all logged away.” Bloomsbury Review, Editor's Favorite Books of 1999"