Students and faculty filled the rows of chairs facing the stage in Moore Lounge on Thursday, February 20 for the Mackey keynote reading. We listened attentively as this year’s Mackey Chair, Janisse Ray, read a piece she wrote during her time at Beloit.
The piece, titled “Force-Field,” resonated with me, and I fought back tears as I listened to its thoughtful observations of Beloit, and the way she was able to find the momentous within the ordinary. She described the way a deeply grooved burr oak tree on campus reminded her of a friend, and the holiness within a loaf of freshly baked bread. During the winter months, I sometimes find myself feeling resentful towards Beloit’s bare trees and gray skies. Her work reminded me there is still beauty to be found, if only I pay attention.
Admiration and love for nature is a major theme in her work. Her passion for nature came to her on a trail in South America while she was there teaching English. “I was really searching for my path and I was hiking this mountain trail and I was basically praying, like, what do I do with my life?” she says. “I love nature, I love writing…I had this epiphanic moment, [that] my job is to tell the stories of nature.”
When Ray got back to the United States, she connected with other women writers who held similar interests in biology or nature and together, they formed a group. Inspiration also came to her through the work of other nature writers such as Rachel Carson and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, whose work spread awareness about environmental issues. Ray’s work follows that tradition of activism through writing. “I believe that stories will save us…we’ve allowed [certain] narratives to become dominant, like capitalism, and what capitalism says is it’s okay to destroy anything in order to make money. I believe in making money, but it’s not okay to destroy our rivers, our prairies, our forest, our farms. It’s just not,” says Ray. “When we find the right stories, our political institutions will follow.”
Ray shares these values through her teaching. “I think that’s why I teach so many people. I want to create a network where we’re putting stories out in the world of how the world could be a more peaceful, more sustainable, wilder, greener, more kind place.” At Beloit, she led a workshop in the Iowa style where each student’s writing is read by the whole class, which then provides feedback to the writer. Ray chose to focus on scene writing, saying “to render a scene through the senses, what you hear, we just heard a door, what we smell, what we feel, what we taste, is very, very difficult. So I wanted to train my students toward that.”
During a conversation, I connected with Ray over our feelings of homesickness. While she expressed appreciation for friendships formed with faculty, such as Mackey Chair Director and Professor Chris Fink, and admiration for Wisconsin’s natural beauty, she opened up about her longing for the serenity of her home in Georgia. “I live way in the country on a dirt road. It’s peaceful, the place is always speaking to me. The trees are talking to me. And here, there are a lot of loud mufflers and a lot of people driving up right outside our bedroom.” When Professor Fink asked her how she felt about leaving, she replied, “I gave my whole heart to being here, but I want to go home.”
Our conversation was moving and honest, and I left feeling further appreciation for Beloit, and inspired to pay more attention to the world around me. The importance of events like the Mackey Chair reading cannot be understated — hearing other’s stories may deeply resonate, like Ray’s reading did for me, changing one’s perspective on the world.
More information about Janisse Ray’s work and courses can be found on her website, janisseray.com, and she also posts work on her Substack: “Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray.”
March 31, 2025
