DAHLONEGA - The University of North Georgia's (UNG) Lewis F. Rogers Institute for Environmental and Spatial Analysis will host award-winning author, naturalist and UNG alumna Janisse Ray on Wednesday.
Ray, 2015 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, is an author of five books of literary nonfiction and a collection of nature poetry. She will speak on environmental topics and her recent book about seeds and food, "The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food." Ray looks at how the diversity of seed supply is disappearing and causing the current critical situation in farming and our food supply.
"She has so much to say about our local culture, our gardening traditions, our exotic seeds which we must save, and the rise of farmers markets that promises to change the way we eat and our local economies," said Dr. John O’Sullivan, a professor of environmental studies and sociology at UNG.
"The Seed Underground" won the Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Makes a Difference, American Horticultural Society Book Award, Nautilus Gold Book Award, Garden Writers Association Gold Award and Green Prize for Sustainable Literature Award.
Ray 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.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Montana, where she was the William Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer in 2014.
Ray is a visiting professor and writer-in-residence at universities and colleges around the nation. She is an organic gardener, caretaker of farm animals, slow-food cook, and seed-saver. She lectures nationally on nature, community, agriculture, seeds, wildness, sustainability and the politics of wholeness.
Ray will speak at the Dahlonega Campus and the Gainesville Campus on April 15. She will be on the Dahlonega Campus in the Health and Natural Science Building, room 232, at noon and in the Continuing Education Building, room 108, at 7 p.m. on the Gainesville Campus.
