Janisse Ray
The 2018 “Sunday with Friends†literary series in Abingdon, Virginia, hosts Janisse Ray. The event is at 3 p.m., March 11 in the conference room of the Washington County Public Library. The annual series is sponsored by the Friends of the Washington County Public Library and is free to the public.
Ray is the author of “The Seed Underground,†a book of stories about seed saving, both the author’s own and those from people who are waging a quiet revolution in thousands of gardens across America to preserve our traditional cornucopia of food by simply growing old varieties and eating them. “The Seed Underground†pays tribute to time-honored and threatened varieties, deconstructs the politics and genetics of seeds and reveals the astonishing characters who grow, study and save them.
Ray is the author of five books of literary nonfiction, including “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood,†a classic coming-of-age memoir, about growing up in a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast. She is the Louis Rubin Visiting Writer at Hollins University, Roanoke, Viginia.
Her friend Holly Haworth joins her. Haworth is an East Tennessee native whose works have appeared in Oxfored American, Orion and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She has reported on mushroom foraging, fossils, mussels, cricket song and train rides.
A reception, book sales and book signing immediately follows the event.
Upcoming speakers in the series include Colette Burson, April 8; Wiley Cash, April 29 and Rita Quillen and other poets, May 20.
For more information about the library, visit www.wcpl.net or call 276-676-6222. The Washington County Public Library is located at 205 Oak Hill St., Abingdon, Va. Its four branches are located in Damascus, Glade Spring, Hayters Gap and Mendota.
