Donny Bailey Seagraves was born in the old St. Mary’s Hospital on Milledge Avenue in Athens, Georgia. Her parents were very young when she was born, so she lived with her mother and grandparents for the first year of her life while her father was a military policeman in the Army in Japan during the Korean Conflict.
She spent a lot of time with her Grandma Myrt (her father's mother) as a child. Myrt worked as a “Rosie the Riveter” in the “bomber plant” (Lockheed) in Marietta during World War II. She was a wonderful grandma with a great, quirky sense of humor. Donny still misses her homemade vegetable soup and her laugh.
Grandma Agnes (her mother's mother) was Donny's other favorite Grandma. She was an avid reader and a great fan of the Atlanta Braves baseball team and gospel singing. Her dad was a sacred harp singer many, many years ago. He was also a ventriloquist who entertained everyone by “throwing” his voice whenever he visited. Grandma Agnes taught Donny how to play the guitar on her brother’s old flattop.
When Donny wasn’t flying junebugs, reading was her favorite activity as a child, followed closely by skating. Her favorite skating spot was the driveway of her house on Indiana Avenue. It was the only paved driveway in our neighborhood at the time, so it was a popular hangout for all the neighborhood kids for skating and bike riding. But Donny was the champ (after all, it was her driveway). Later, she took up skateboarding, tennis and basketball. You can’t read all the time.
Donny started first grade at age five. After completing first grade and part of second grade at St. Joseph's Elementary School, Athens' only private school at the time, Donny entered Clarke County's public school system. Oconee St. School came first and Donny's very first teacher there was Mrs. Dycie Campbell. The story Donny heard later on, about the tragic shooting of Mrs. Campbell's husband by her nephew, sparked the idea many years later for Donny's first published novel, GONE FROM THESE WOODS.
Donny began writing in fourth grade, with encouragement from her teacher, Mrs. Doster. Poems came first. Mrs. Doster, who also was Donny's fifth grade teacher, even sent off some of Donny's poems to a children's magazine, resulting in Donny's first rejection! Donny also became an avid reader at this time and spent quite a bite of time in Athens Regional Library (in the old Hancock Ave. building in downtown Athens).
At age eleven, Donny moved with her parents and younger brother, Mike, from Indiana Avenue in Athens, Georgia, to Cherokee Road near the tiny town of Winterville, where she still lives today. Because this house was near the line between school zones, Donny had a choice of elementary schools that year. She could have gone to Gaines School in Athens, the school her mother attended. Instead, she chose to finish sixth grade at Winterville Elementary School.
At home, Donny and neighborhood friends, David Mathis, Jerry Yarborough, Marie Fleeman, and Shay Spratlin (among others) made regular journeys into the woods behind Donny's house on Cherokee Road, and across the street where there was a lake full of snakes and even an alligator! The woods behind Donny's house featured a stretch of Beaverdam Creek, which is very similar to Mouse Creek which is featured in Donny's debut novel, GONE FROM THESE WOODS.
Donny's fourteen-years-younger sister, Leanne, was born while the family lived in the Cherokee Road house.
In seventh grade, Donny joined all the other seventh grade students in the Clarke County school district at an all-seventh grade school in the old Child's Street School building in downtown Athens. She went to Clarke County Junior High (now Clarke Middle) for eighth grade, then to Pattie Hilsman Junior High (now Hilsman Middle) the first year it opened.
Then it was on to Athens High School (now Clarke Central).In high school, Donny wrote articles and was the Art Editor and Cartoonist for the school paper, The Thumbtack Tribune. When asked to fill out a questionnaire about her plans after high school on one of her last days at Athens High, she wrote “writer” and “bookstore owner” as her plans for a career. Today, she is a children's book author and freelance writer and former owner of an online bookstore, Junebug Books. Go figure.
Donny attended the University of Georgia, majoring in journalism. She married Phillip Seagraves, also a native of Athens, and they are the parents of twins, Jennifer and Gregory.
Before her children were born and while they were growing up, Donny held many jobs including bookkeeper at several different Athens businesses, substitute city clerk, councilmember, mayor pro tem, and acting mayor for the City of Winterville, Claims Development Clerk for the Social Security Administration District Office in Athens, and library assistant at Winterville Elementary School. Donny also worked as a freelance writer for many years, publishing in many regional and national newspapers and magazines including: the Chicago Tribune, Grit, Mature Living, Twins, The Lookout, Athens Magazine, and The Roswell (New Mexico) Literary Review. She was a newspaper columnist for The Athens Observer for one year, and for the Athens Daily News for six years. She has written for Athens Magazine since 1993.
For ten years (1998 - 2008) Donny ran an online, out-of-print book business. Her bookstore name, Junebug Books, originated from a childhood nickname given to her by Aunt Judith. Judith was only three years older than Donny, so they grew up together like sisters. In the hot summertime in Georgia they liked to play with junebugs, tying a string to their legs and flying them around their heads like tiny insect airplanes. That’s how Donny got her Junebug nickname.
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