The Florida State University Coastal & Marine Lab

Writers Workshop: Session IV

April 10 , 2011Time 9:00AM until 4:30PMPlace FSUCML Auditorium

Janisse Ray

Writer, Naturalist & Activist

BIO – Janisse Ray is author of three books of literary nonfiction and a new collection of nature poetry. She is on the faculty of Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.

She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and in 2007 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Unity College in Maine. Ray has won The Southeastern Booksellers Award (1999), The American Book Award (2000), The Southern Environmental Law Center Award for Outstanding Writing (2000), and The Southern Book Critics Circle Award (2000). The New York Times considered her book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, as a Notable Book. The book was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read, by the Georgia Center for the Book for its "All Georgia Reading the Same Book" Program.

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 John & Renee Grisham writer-in-residence 2003-04 at the University of Mississippi.

Ray attempts to live a simple, sustainable life on a farm in southern Georgia with her husband, Raven Waters. Ray is an organic gardener, tender of farm animals, slow-food cook, and seed-saver. She lectures widely on nature, community, agriculture, wildness, sustainability and the politics of wholeness. Forthcoming works include a nonfiction books on open-pollinated seeds, The Seed Underground (Chelsea Green) and another about the Altamaha River, Drifting Into Darien (University of Georgia Press).

The FSU Coastal & Marine Laboratory 3618 Coastal Highway, St. Teresa, FL

For more information, call Sharon Thoman at 850 697 4095 www.marinelab.fsu.edu DIRECTIONS

Putting the Power of Nature in Your Writing

Cost: $75

So you’ve been jotting down stories. You’ve been journaling. You’ve been walking the beaches of your life, collecting anecdotes and images and metaphors. Now it’s time to put them together into a larger work -- an article, essay, or book. In this day-long workshop to be held on the legendary Panhandle coast, you will get the chance to focus on your art. By telling our stories in imaginative, engaging ways, we help create a world in which our lives are more meaningful, sensible, and beautiful.

Spend a day on Apalachee Bay:

* writing* shaping ideas * mastering creative nonfiction* thinking about an essay or a book* learning structure and its various forms* setting goals* addressing art & craft* being with other writers* enriching the presence of the natural world in your work.

What to Bring: Lunch, a water bottle, journal or paper & writing utensils, hat, sunscreen, binoculars if you have them, a favorite book.

View this announcement on our website: http://www.marinelab.fsu.edu/outreach/writers4.html