Janisse Ray launches new book on Altamaha River

Nationally acclaimed Georgia author Janisse Ray will launch her new book at the Decatur Book Festival this weekend. DRIFTING INTO DARIEN explores Ray's lifelong relationship with the Altamaha River in southeast Georgia.

The first part of the book chronicles a paddling trip along the entire length of the Altamaha, from where it begins at the confluence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers to where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean near the town of Darien.

Born in Baxley, Georgia, which sits about ten miles from the Altamaha, Ray once fell in the river as a baby and both her family’s history and her own repeatedly connect with the river.

In the second part of the book, Ray writes about many facets of the Altamaha’s ecological significance and some of the threats to its remarkable biodiversity. The Altamaha, which has been the focus of decades of conservation effort by the Nature Conservancy, is the largest free-flowing, intact water system on the Atlantic coast and is home to more than 120 rare and endangered species.

Ray is the author of four books of literary nonfiction and a collection of poetry. Her debut book Ecology of a Cracker Childhood was considered groundbreaking for environmental writing because it brought attention not to a pristine region, but to the heavily timbered landscape of southeast Georgia which had once been covered in longleaf pine forest.

Ray also wrote powerfully about her family’s connection to the land and included topics such as mental illness, poverty and fundamentalist religion which were unusual in the nature writing genre.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read in 2002.

Ray has lectured and taught widely and is currently on faculty at Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program. She makes her home with her husband and son on a farm in southern Georgia where she attempts to live a simple, sustainable life.

As Georgia novelist Tina McElroy Ansa notes in praise for Drifting into Darien, “Janisse Ray is, and always has been, the real authentic deal.”

Selected event details -- for more visit janisseray.weebly.com

Saturday, September 3 @ 5:30 pm - Atlanta, GA
Decatur Book Festival (decaturbookfestival.com)
Decatur Conference Stage (Ballroom B)
Free and open to the public

Saturday, September 26 @ 7:00 pm – Baxley, GA
Appling County Public Library, 300 City Hall Drive
Free and open to the public

Tuesday, October 11 @ 7:00 pm – Athens, GA
Seney-Stovall Chapel, 201 N. Milledge Ave.
Free and open to the public

Thursday, October 13 @ 6:00 pm – Darien, GA
Darien Waterfront Wine and Gourmet, 107 Broad St.
Book signing to benefit Altamaha Riverkeeper
$30 ticket includes wine and hors d’oeuvres

Tuesday, October 18 @ 7:15 pm – Atlanta, GA
Georgia Center for the Book
Reading with John Lane and Thomas Rain Crowe
Free and open to the public

Tuesday, October 25 @ 6 pm – Statesboro, GA
COBA (College of Business Administration) Room 1124, Forest Drive
Georgia Southern University
Free and open to the public

Thursday, November 3 @ 7 pm – Brunswick, GA
Brunswick-Glynn County Library, 208 Gloucester St.
Free and open to the public

Tuesday, November 8 @ 6:30 pm – Moultrie, GA
Moultrie-Colquitt County Library, 204 5th Street Southeast
Free and open to the public

New Collaboration Formed with the Library Company of Philadelphia

The University of Georgia Press and the Library Company of Philadelphia have formed a partnership to support Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900, a series of books focused on racial aspects of transatlantic history.

“We are honored to be partnering with such a prestigious and influential organization as the Library Company of Philadelphia. Working together on the Press’s already well-established Race in the Atlantic World series will only serve to strengthen our shared mission of publishing and disseminating important new scholarship on African and African American history and culture,” says Nicole Mitchell, director of the University of Georgia Press.

Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the Library Company was America’s first successful lending library and is its oldest cultural institution. It is now a repository of rare books and graphics specializing in American history and culture from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. The Library Company’s Program in African American History, directed by Erica Armstrong Dunbar of the University of Delaware, will work directly with the series.

“Disseminating the best scholarship in this important field is one of the goals of our Program in African American History,” says John C. Van Horne, director of the Library Company. “Partnering with the University of Georgia Press and its well-established series is a natural way for us to fulfill that part of our mission.”

The Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 series was created by the University of Georgia Press in 2006 and is edited by Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Manisha Sinha. Nine books have already been published in the series, including work by established authors such as Philip Morgan, Marcus Wood, Afua Cooper, and Vincent Carretta. The series has also featured first books by an international cohort of emerging scholars including Gale Kenny, Jeannette Jones, and Mischa Honeck.

“Race in the Atlantic World has, over the past five years, produced a remarkable body of scholarship about the African Diaspora,” says Derek Krissoff, senior acquisitions editor at the University of Georgia Press. “With the additional resources and expertise made possible through our partnership with the Library Company, I’m confident that the series will accomplish even more exciting things.”

The first book under the new partnership will be Eva Sheppard Wolf’s Almost Free: A Story about Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia, to be published in spring 2012. Douglas Egerton, author of Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War, calls the forthcoming book “an elegant and illuminating study that reminds us just how complicated race was in the early national South.” All books in the copublished series will receive a subsidy from the Library Company to help fund publishing and printing costs.

Technorati Tags: Library Company of Philadelphia  African American History  Black History  African Diaspora

Events (and Beer) to Commemorate the Charleston Earthquake

On August 31, 1886, an earthquake devastated the city of Charleston and sent shocks up and down the east coast.

The authors of the recent release UPHEAVAL IN CHARLESTON, which describes both the quake itself and the political and social upheaval aftewards (including a sensational murder trial), will be taking part in several events to mark the 125th anniversary of the earthquake next week.

After the original quake, a company called Palmetto Brewery produced an Earthquake Beer for a celebration to mark the end of the earthquake damage. For the upcoming anniversary, the current Palmetto Brewery will release Aftershock beer, which will feature a historic photo from UPHEAVAL IN CHARLESTON on the label. Charleston's Sugar Bakeshop also plans to feature an earthquake cupcake.

On Sunday, August 28, from 2-5 pm, the Preservation Society of Charleston is hosting an anniversary event with authors Steve Hoffius and Susan Williams at the historic Wentworth Mansion at 149 Wentworth Street in Charleston. Tickets, available online, include food, drink, and a tour of the mansion; proceeds benefit the Seven to Save preservation campaign. The mansion, built as the private home of businessman Francis Silas Rodgers, was under construction at the time of the quake.

In a second event that is free and open to the public (but will not, alas, include Aftershock beer), the authors will speak at the College of Charleston's Addlestone Library, Room 227, on Wednesday, August 31 at 6 pm. The talk is sponsored by the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World. Addlestone Library will have an online exhibit and window display featuring information about the quake.

On Saturday, September 3 at 7 pm, the earthquake will be the theme of the Charleston RiverDogs vs. Asheville Tourists game at Joseph P. Riley, Jr. ballpark at 360 Fishburne St. in Charleston. Earthquake beer will be available and the authors will be on hand for a signing. Facts about the quake will be announced every half inning.

Charleston Earthquake Anniversary Event details

Sunday, August 28, 2-5 pm
Wentworth Mansion, 149 Wentworth Street
Talk, tour and refreshments
Tickets $35, available at www.preservationsociety.org

Wednesday, August 31 @ 6 pm
College of Charleston, Addlestone Library Room 227, 205 Calhoun St.
Sponsored by CLAW
Free and open to the public

Saturday, September 3 @ 7:05 pm
Earthquake anniversary day at the Charleston RiverDogs ballpark
Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Par, 360 Fishburne St.
Tickets start at $6

Before Katrina, there was Camille

Forty-two years ago, on August 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille hit Mississippi. Nothing in modern hurricane history has quite matched the combination of it's sustained wind speeds, barometric lows, and storm surge—not to mention the reach of its destructive path (from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the Appalachians of central Virginia).

If our now-familiar system of rating Atlantic storms had been in use at the time, Camille would have been a Category 5—with a vengeance—when it made landfall. It's a testament to Camille's devastation that it inspired the implementation of the Saffir-Simpson scale, which rates hurricane severity across a range from 1 to 5.

In CAMILLE, 1969, historian Mark M. Smith revisits Camille's ground zero in southern Mississippi. Smith brings alive the sensory experience and impact of the hurricane—how the storm rearranged and challenged residents’ senses of smell, sight, sound, touch, and taste. He also discusses how longstanding attitudes and customs based on race and class fared in the storm's aftermath.

Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Central Library

Smith was recently a guest on the South Carolina public radio show Walter Edgar's Journal. "Something as powerful as Camille . . . throws a society back into almost a premodern era," Smith told Edgar, as he explained how Mississippians' worlds were "utterly rearranged" by Camille at both physical and psychological levels. Listen to Smith's entire interview online at ETV Radio.

Mark M. Smith has a longstanding interest in sensory history, which he describes as a "vibrant area of historical inquiry dedicated to examining the roles played by olfaction, hearing, touch, and taste (as well as vision) in shaping the past." To learn more about sensory history, check out HEARING HISTORY, the first anthology devoted to aural history.

Other hurricane-related titles from the Press include BEYOND KATRINA and LOWCOUNTRY HURRICANES. And for further insights into how a large-scale natural disaster can disrupt—often for the better—a stricly ordered society, check out the recently released UPHEAVAL IN CHARLESTON, about the famous 1886 earthquake in South Carolina.

Technorati Tags: Hurricane Camille   Hurricane History