Mountain Conservation Trust of Georgia Hires a New Executive Director!
~Meet Liz Cole~
Liz Cole joins us June 14th with over 20 years experience working with federal, state and local agencies, non-profit organizations and community groups to develop greenway, blueway, park and land protection projects.
We are thrilled to have Liz's experience and enthusiasm on board! Stay tuned for more about Liz in our Summer newsletter coming out mid-June.
Liz invites you to visit, call or email and share your ideas and vision for our natural areas. She can be reached at lcole@mctga.org or at our offices in downtown Jasper at 706.253.4077.
Janisse Ray, Writer, Naturalist,
& Activist Speaks at Annual Meeting
~Join us on Saturday, September 25th~
We are thrilled to welcome Janisse Ray as our speaker for the Member's Annual Meeting on Saturday, September 25th at Tate Mountain Estates, Jasper.
Janisse Ray is author of three books of literary nonfiction, including the acclaimed Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast. Her first book-length collection of poetry, A House of Branches, is forthcoming from Wind Publications. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and in 2007 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Unity College in Maine. She is on the faculty of Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood was published by Milkweed Editions in 1999. Besides being a plea to protect and restore the pine flatwoods of the South, the book looks hard at family, mental illness, poverty, and fundamentalist religion. Essayist Wendell Berry called the book “well done and deeply moving.” Anne Raver of The New York Times said of Janisse Ray, “The forests of the South find their Rachel Carson.”
Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, about rural community, was published by Milkweed Editions in early 2003.
Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, the story of a 750,000-acre wildland corridor between south Georgia and north Florida, was published by Chelsea Green in 2005. Ray edited In One Place and Moody Forest(see Facebook page), and co-edited UnspOILed: Writers Speak for Florida’s Coast and Between Two Rivers for the Red Hills Writers Project. She is anthologized widely.
Ray has won a Southeastern Booksellers Award 1999, an American Book Award 2000, the Southern Environmental Law Center 2000 Award for Outstanding Writing, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award 2000. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read.
She has been visiting professor at Coastal Carolina University, scholar-in-residence at Florida Gulf Coast University, and writer-in-residence at Keene State College and Green Mountain College. She was the Grisham writer-in-residence 2003-04 at the University of Mississippi.
Ray lives in the coastal plains of southern Georgia, where she farms, studies nature, and writes. She and her husband, Raven Waters, have three grown children and two grandchildren. The author lectures widely on nature, community, agriculture, wildness, sustainability and the politics of wholeness. Forthcoming works include Drifting into Darien, a study of the Altamaha River, and a nonfiction book on open-pollinated seeds, The Seed Underground.
This meeting is the only one all year that is for members only and their guests. This is a great opportunity to introduce a friend and potential member to Mountain Conservation Trust.
Mark your calendars...you don't want to miss Janisse Ray!
