Nature writer Janisse Ray will be teaching a nonfiction class as the 2025 Mackey Chair. Janisse Ray will arrive on campus at the start of the spring 2025 semester and teach a nonfiction writing course through spring break, as well as deliver a public reading on campus.

A native of rural Georgia, Ray wrote over a dozen books over the last two decades, including Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans in 2021 and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, which won the American Book Award in 1999 . Her work is rooted in the land, depicting wildlife, rivers, swamps, forests, rural neighborhoods, farms, and manmade landscapes. In her personal essays and environmental journalism pieces, she explores seed-saving, junkyards, climate change, her fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and the pleasures of farming life.

English professor Chris Fink is excited to welcome Ray as this year’s distinguished creative writing professor.

“I’ve been teaching Janisse Ray’s work for a few years now, and students really love her writing about being connected to place, and to the natural world,” Fink says. “She’s an inspirational writer and teacher.”

Ray received her MFA from the University of Montana before returning to Georgia, where she currently runs a family farm. Her nature-focused writing has brought her to teach writing courses and seminars at colleges and universities across the country, as well as on the airwaves with The Wild Spectacle Podcast, a short-form podcast interviewing fellow writers, environmentalists, activists, and educators.

The Mackey Chair is an annual campus residency funded by Willard Mackey’47 in honor of his wife, Lois.