2025 Mackey Chair to give keynote reading

Janisse Ray has arrived on campus, teaching the Mackey workshop, and working with Beloit’s creative writers. Ray will be delivering a keynote speech on Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 7:30pm in Morse-Ingersoll Hall, Richardson Auditorium.

Spanning nearly two decades, Ray’s work consists of more than a dozen books 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 central themes focus on nature, depicting wildlife, forests, and rural farm life; additionally detailing her fundamentalist Christian upbringing in personal essays. Ray also explores the land and impacts of climate change in pieces of environmental journalism.

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

“Beloit creative writers are lucky to learn from a writer of Ray’s caliber. She’s an inspirational teacher, and her keynote reading is a can’t miss event.”

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.

February 03, 2025

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