Janisse Ray is an award-winning American author who explores the borderland of wild nature and human culture. Her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, is an environmental memoir that chronicled the story of growing up in the disappearing longleaf pine flatwoods. It was a New York Times Notable and a Book All Georgians Should Read. It is credited with bringing attention to a critically endangered ecosystem and starting a movement to restore the iconic landscape. That first book was followed by eleven others, including two volumes of eco-poetry and a 2022 reader-acclaimed novel, The Woods of Fannin County. Her latest book is a writing manual, Craft and Current, out in 2024.

She has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Booksellers Award, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, Nautilus Award, and Eisenberg Award, among many others. Her collection of essays, Wild Spectacle, received the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, which carries a $10,000 prize. Her books have been translated into Turkish, French, and Italian. Ray lives on an organic farm inland from Savannah, Georgia.