Emanuel Arts Council will present award-winning author Janisse Ray on Thursday, August 17th at 6 p.m. in The Kalmanson Gallery of Emanuel Arts Council. Ray will be giving a reading from her novel, The Woods of Fannin County and will also be signing books. Only 50 seats are available, and tickets must be purchased in advance at The Kalmanson Gallery at 109 North Green Street, Swainsboro. Each ticket is $10. This program is made possible by Mill Creek Foundation.
In the fall of 1945 eight children, brothers and sisters, vanished from a small house in Morganton, Ga. The oldest was 10 and the youngest a newborn. They were taken by mule and wagon to a shack on a remote mountain in the Blue Ridge foothills of Fannin County, up where it hugs the North Carolina line. For the next four years they would live mostly alone, without mother or father, roaming the mountains and valleys of what had been Cherokee Territory, scouring for food and scrambling to take care of themselves and each other. Few people ever knew what happened. Over time the children themselves became silent about their childhood, and their story was buried. One day in 2015 the children, long grown and many of them now grandparents, began to reveal the story to Janisse Ray. This novel has since received glowing reviews from numerous publications.
Ray is best known for her 1999 memoir Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, which recalls her childhood growing up in a junkyard in Baxley, Ga. Other notable books Ray has authored include Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, Drifting into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River, and Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans. Ray’s writings have been published widely in journals and magazines such as Studies in American Culture, The Georgia Review, Orion, Natural History, Wilderness, Audubon, Sierra, and Georgia Wildlife.
Ray is the recipient of the American Book Award, Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and Southern Environmental Law Center Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern environment. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana and has been awarded two honorary doctorates, one from Unity College in Maine and the other from LaGrange College in Georgia. In 2015, Ray was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
The Emanuel Arts Council, Inc. (EAC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose purpose is to empower and grow the community through cultural programs in all areas of the arts for the general community betterment and benefit of the people of Emanuel County and surrounding areas. The EAC is supported by the City of Swainsboro and Swainsboro-Emanuel County Chamber of Commerce, and operates through donations, fundraisers, and grants.
For more information on programming, follow Emanuel Arts Council on Facebook and Instagram; or call 478-237-2592.
