Wendell Erdman Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is closely associated with rural Kentucky, where he wrote about farming and rural life in books like The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). He also wrote about rural communities in his Port William series, including books like A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).

He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, since 2014, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Life

John Marshall Berry was the first child of John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and tobacco farmer in Henry County, Kentucky, and Virginia Erdman Berry. Both of Berry’s parents’ families had farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. Berry went to high school at Millersburg Military Institute and later earned a bachelor’s degree (1956) and a master’s degree (1957) in English from the University of Kentucky. In 1956, while studying at the University of Kentucky, he met Gurney Norman, another writer from Kentucky. Berry finished his master’s degree and married Tanya Amyx in 1957. In 1958, he joined Stanford University’s creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, where he studied with Stegner and classmates such as Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Ernest Gaines, Tillie Olsen, and Ken Kesey. Berry’s first novel, Nathan Coulter, was published in April 1960.

In 1961, a Guggenheim Fellowship took Berry and his family to Italy and France, where he met Wallace Fowlie, a critic and translator of French literature. From 1962 to 1964, Berry taught English at New York University’s campus in the Bronx. In 1964, he began teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky, where he worked until 1977. During this time in Lexington, Kentucky, he met author Guy Davenport, author and monk Thomas Merton, and photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard.

On July 4, 1965, Berry, his wife, and their two children moved to Lane’s Landing, a 12-acre farm (4.9 hectares) that Berry had bought. They started growing corn and small grains, which eventually expanded to a homestead of about 117 acres (47 hectares). In 1978, they bought their first flock of seven Border Cheviot sheep. Lane’s Landing is located in Henry County, north central Kentucky, near Port Royal, and close to where Berry’s parents were born. It sits on the western side of the Kentucky River, not far from where the river flows into the Ohio River. Berry has farmed, lived, and written at Lane’s Landing ever since. He has written about his early experiences on the land and his decision to return to it in essays such as “The Long-Legged House” and “A Native Hill.”

From 1977 to 1980, Berry worked for Rodale, Inc. in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, writing for publications such as Organic Gardening and Farming and The New Farm. From 1987 to 1993, he returned to teach in the English Department at the University of Kentucky. Berry has written at least twenty-five books of poems, twenty-four volumes of essays, and fifteen novels and short story collections. His writing is based on the idea that one’s work should be connected to and reflect the place where they live.

Activism

On February 10, 1968, Wendell Berry gave a speech titled "A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" at the University of Kentucky in Lexington during the Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft.

In November 1977, Berry debated former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz at Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana. During the debate, Berry defended the importance of small family farms and rural communities, which Butz believed were being replaced by industrial farming methods. Berry stated, "My basic assumption when talking about agriculture is that there's more to it than just agriculture. That you can't disconnect one part of a society from all the other parts and just look at the results and that alone."

On June 3, 1979, Berry participated in nonviolent civil disobedience to protest the construction of a nuclear power plant in Marble Hill, Indiana. He later wrote about this event in an essay titled "The Reactor and the Garden."

On February 9, 2003, Berry published an essay titled "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States" as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. The essay criticized the George W. Bush administration's post-9/11 international strategy. Berry wrote, "The new National Security Strategy published by the White House in September 2002, if carried out, would amount to a radical revision of the political character of our nation."

On January 4, 2009, Berry and Wes Jackson, president of The Land Institute, wrote an op-ed article titled "A 50-Year Farm Bill" for The New York Times. In July 2009, Berry, Jackson, and Fred Kirschenmann of The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture met in Washington, D.C., to promote the idea of a 50-year farm bill that would address soil loss, pollution, fossil-fuel use, and the decline of rural communities.

In January 2009, Berry released a statement opposing the death penalty. He wrote, "As I am made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life before birth, I am also made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life after birth." In November 2009, Berry and 38 other Kentucky writers sent a letter to Gov. Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway, asking them to pause the use of the death penalty in Kentucky.

On March 2, 2009, Berry joined over 2,000 people in Washington, D.C., to nonviolently block the gates of a coal-fired power plant. No arrests were made.

On May 22, 2009, Berry spoke against the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) during a listening session in Louisville. He said, "If you impose this program on the small farmers, who are already overburdened, you're going to have to send the police for me. I'm 75 years old. I've about completed my responsibilities to my family. I'll lose very little in going to jail in opposition to your program – and I'll have to do it. Because I will be, in every way that I can conceive of, a non-cooperator."

In October 2009, Berry worked with the Kentucky Environmental Foundation and other groups to protest the construction of a coal-burning power plant in Clark County, Kentucky. On February 28, 2011, the Kentucky Public Service Commission approved the cancellation of the power plant.

On December 20, 2009, Berry removed his papers from the University of Kentucky because of the university's close ties to the coal industry. He told the Lexington Herald-Leader, "I don't think the University of Kentucky can be so openly friendly to the coal industry … and still be a friend to me and the interests for which I have stood for the last 45 years. … If they love the coal industry that much, I have to cancel my friendship." In August 2012, the papers were donated to The Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort.

On September 28, 2010, Berry participated in a rally in Louisville during an EPA hearing on coal ash management. He said, "The EPA knows that coal ash is poison. We ask it only to believe in its own findings on this issue, and do its duty."

In February 2011, Berry and 14 other protesters locked themselves in the Kentucky governor's office to oppose mountaintop removal coal mining. They were part of the environmental group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. After a weekend of protest, they joined a large outdoor rally in support of their cause.

In 2011, the Berry Center was created in New Castle, Kentucky, to focus on changing industrial agriculture into a system that follows nature, avoids harm to the environment, and protects human health in local communities.

In June 2020, Wendell Berry supported Mike Broihier in the Democratic primary for Kentucky's U.S. Senate election.

In July 2020, Berry and his wife, Tanya Amyx Berry, sued the University of Kentucky to stop the removal of a mural that some people say is "racially offensive." The mural was created in the 1930s by Ann Rice O'Hanlon, a relative of Tanya Amyx Berry.

In August 2022, Berry spoke against re-zoning agricultural land in Henry County, Kentucky, to allow Angel's Envy distillery to develop the property for bourbon-barrel storage and agritourism. Despite Berry's testimony and that of others, the planning commission approved the re-zoning request.

Ideas

Wendell Berry’s nonfiction writing is a long discussion about the kind of life he believes is important. He thinks a good life includes farming that keeps the land healthy for the future, tools and methods that work well with nature, strong communities in rural areas, feeling connected to the land, enjoying good food, raising animals responsibly, doing meaningful work, supporting local businesses, respecting the wonder of life, being faithful and careful with resources, showing deep respect for nature, and understanding how all living things are connected. Berry sees dangers to this simple, good life as including large-scale farming that harms the environment, not knowing enough about important issues, overconfidence, greed, harming people and nature, loss of soil in the United States, global economic systems that ignore local needs, and damage to the environment. As someone who strongly supports farming traditions, Berry’s interest in old farming methods, like those used by the Amish, grew in the 1970s, partly because of conversations with Maurice Telleen, who published the Draft Horse Journal. Berry has always supported Wes Jackson, believing that Jackson’s work at The Land Institute follows the idea of “solving for pattern,” which means finding solutions that fix many problems without creating new ones, and using nature as a model for how to do things.

Jedediah Britton-Purdy has studied many of Berry’s main ideas and concerns. The phrase “solving for pattern,” which Berry introduced in an essay with the same name, describes the process of finding solutions that address multiple problems while avoiding new ones. The essay was first published in The New Farm, a magazine by Rodale, Inc. Although Berry first used the phrase in the context of farming, the idea has since been used more broadly by people who design buildings, landscapes, and systems.

Berry, who says he takes the Christian message seriously, has criticized some Christian groups for not speaking out against harm to the environment and has pointed out what he sees as overconfidence among some Christians. He supports the idea of Christian pacifism, which is the belief that violence is never acceptable, as shown in his book Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ’s Teachings About Love, Compassion and Forgiveness (2005).

Berry’s ideas, especially his poem “Sabbaths III, 1989 (Santa Clara Valley),” inspired the 2007 film The Unforeseen, made by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford. In the film, Berry reads his own poem. Director Laura Dunn later created the 2016 film Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, also made by Malick and Redford.

Poetry

Wendell Berry’s poetry often takes the form of contemporary eclogues, pastorals, or elegies. He also writes dramatic and historical narratives, such as “Bringer of Water” and “July, 1773,” and occasional or discursive poems, such as “Against the War in Vietnam” and “Some Further Words.”

Berry’s first published poetry book contained only one poem, November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three (1964). This elegiac poem was created and illustrated by Ben Shahn to honor the death of John F. Kennedy. The poem begins:

We know The winter earth Upon the body Of the young President, And the early dark Falling;

It continues for ten more stanzas, each starting with the phrase “We know.” According to Triggs, the elegiac form in Berry’s work helps him show how past and future generations are connected through their shared relationship with the land.

Berry’s first full-length poetry collection, The Broken Ground (1964), explores themes such as the cycle of life and death, the importance of place, pastoral imagery, and recurring references to the Kentucky River and the hill farms of north-central Kentucky.

Angyal notes that Berry’s poetry lacks modernist or postmodernist styles. Berry believes that a focus on the real world, rather than abstract ideas, shapes his work. In “Notes: Unspecializing Poetry,” he writes, “Devotion to order that is not poetical prevents the specialization of poetry.” He adds, “Nothing exists for its own sake, but for a harmony greater than itself which includes it. A work of art that accepts this condition honors the Creation and becomes part of it.”

Lionel Basney places Berry’s poetry within a tradition of didactic poetry, which dates back to Horace. This means Berry’s poetry aims to teach a specific wisdom and reflects a traditional view of art as a means of education.

For Berry, poetry exists “at the center of a complex reminding.” Both the poet and the reader are reminded of the poem’s crafted language, its literary influences, what is remembered or should be remembered, and the formal integrity of other works, creatures, and structures in the world.

From 1979 to the present, Berry has written poems he calls “Sabbath poems.” These were first collected in A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997. Later collections include Sabbaths (1998–2004) in Given: New Poems, Sabbaths (2005–2008) in Leavings, and all Sabbath poems through 2012 in This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979–2012. Sabbaths 2013 was published by Larkspur Press. A Small Porch contains nine Sabbath poems from 2014 and sixteen from 2015. One Sabbath poem, “What Passes, What Remains” (VIII from 2016), is included as an epilogue in The Art of Loading Brush. This poem, along with fourteen others, is also found in Sabbaths 2016, published by Larkspur Press.

Berry writes these poems during Sunday morning walks on the land. He explains, “I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration.” In a 1979 poem, he writes:

The bell calls in the town Where forebears cleared the shaded land And brought high daylight down To shine on field and trodden road. I hear, but understand Contrarily, and walk into the woods. I leave labor and load, Take up a different story. I keep an inventory Of wonders and of uncommercial goods.

The Sabbath poems are described as being written from a specific place and on particular Sabbaths. They should be read as part of a spiritual practice and as poems devoted to dwelling and living thoughtfully in one place. Oehlschlaeger connects Berry’s work to a key idea from Henry David Thoreau.

Fiction

Wendell Berry has written eight novels and fifty-seven short stories, all collected in books like That Distant Land (2004), A Place in Time (2012), and How It Went (2022). He has also written one verse drama. Together, these works tell the story of a fictional small town in Kentucky called Port William. Because he writes about the lives of people in this imagined town over many years, some people compare his work to that of William Faulkner. However, unlike Faulkner’s stories, which often include extreme characters and dramatic events, Berry’s stories focus more on everyday life and the challenges faced by people in Port William, such as loss, difficult relationships, and struggles with alcohol. Berry does not like being described as writing in a nostalgic or idealized way. He says, “If your work criticizes history, as mine does, you cannot be accused of wanting to return to the past, because you are saying the past was not good enough.”

A major theme in Berry’s stories is the change in farming practices in the United States and the loss of traditional rural life. These changes are often shown as background or underlying ideas in the stories, not always the main focus. Berry tries to show what life was like in the past when farming was done with care and respect, and what kind of values might be possible if such a way of life were practiced today. His stories show how time changes communities, families, and individuals. For example, in A Place on Earth (1967), a farmer named Mat Feltner deals with the death of his son, Virgil. The story shows how Mat and the people around him struggle with the effects of World War II.

Berry also explores how marriage connects people to each other and to nature. Not all characters in Port William have happy or traditional marriages. For example, “Old Jack” Beechum has a difficult relationship with his wife and has a brief, meaningful affair. Another character, Jayber Crow, lives with a deep, unrequited love for a woman he believes he is mentally married to, though she is unaware of it. Burley Coulter never formally marries the mother of his child. Despite these challenges, all these characters remain connected to the community of Port William.

Berry has said that he created the fictional town of Port William to honor the real place where he grew up. Through writing about this imagined town, he has learned to see his home as a special, sacred place. He also says that his goal in writing is to show how people act when they care about each other. His stories can be read in any order.

In January 2018, the Library of America published a collection of Berry’s fiction, the first of four planned volumes. The book Wendell Berry: Port William Novels & Stories (The Civil War to World War II) includes four novels and twenty-three short stories arranged in the order of the events they describe. Berry is one of the few living writers featured in the Library of America series.

In Berry’s first novel, a young boy named Nathan grows up while dealing with the death of his mother, his father’s sadness, his brother’s strong friendship, and his uncle’s mischief. A review says the story is handled poetically but lacks drama and a clear sense of time passing. Another reviewer notes that the novel avoids the problems of Faulkner’s early work and serves as a honest first novel.

The novel set in 1945 follows farmer Mat Feltner as he deals with the news that his son Virgil is missing in action. It also tells the stories of other Port William residents, such as Burley Coulter, Jack Beechum, Ernest Finley, and Ida and Gideon Crop. A revised version of the novel, published in 1983, removed about a third of the original text. A reviewer says this change showed Berry’s growth as a writer, allowing readers to experience the characters’ limited knowledge and the challenges of living in harmony with nature.

Berry’s third novel begins with Jack Beechum as an old man in 1952 and then moves back in time to tell his life as a farmer, a conflicted husband, and a link to past generations. The story spans from the Civil War to just after World War II. A reviewer praises Berry’s ability to avoid making Jack’s story feel either overly heroic or overly cautionary, instead letting the reader experience Jack’s memories as they naturally unfold.

In Berry’s fourth novel, an adult man named Andy Catlett reflects on his life in San Francisco while struggling with feelings of alienation from his hometown, Port William. He deals with issues in his marriage, his farm, and the values of modern American society. A reviewer says Berry contrasts modern farming, which he sees as cold and mechanical, with the older idea of farming as a nurturing way of life. Another reviewer notes that this novel sometimes focuses more on expressing opinions than on showing characters in realistic situations.

In Berry’s fifth novel, Andy Catlett, now an adult, tries to understand the murder of his uncle Andrew, who was killed in 1944. He looks back at the event with a mix of childhood confusion and adult nostalgia. The story shows how violence affects families and communities. A reviewer says Berry shows the harm caused by pride and rigid social rules but also highlights the strength of family love.

In Berry’s sixth novel, the barber Jayber Crow tells the story of his life. He grew up as an orphan near Port William and later becomes a barber in the town. His story explores themes of identity, love, and purpose.

Works

• "Nothing Living Lives Alone" was published in The Threepenny Review in Spring 2011. It won the PEN/O. Henry Prize in 2012. A part of this story, titled "Time Out of Time (1947–2015)," was later included in the book How It Went from 2022.
• "The Stackpole Legend" appeared in The Threepenny Review in Spring 2024.

• The video "Against the Death Penalty" was posted on KCADP's YouTube channel on April 24, 2009.
• Wendell Berry wrote an article titled "The Cost of Displacement" for The Progressive on February 22, 2010.
• The article "To Break The Silence" was published in Appalachian Heritage, Volume 41, Issue 3, in Summer 2013, pages 78–84.

• Mindy Weinreb's "A Question a Day: A Written Conversation with Wendell Berry" was included in Merchant in 1991.
• L. Elisabeth Beattie edited a section about Wendell Berry in Conversations With Kentucky Writers, published by University Press of Kentucky in 1996.
• Jim Minick's "A Citizen and a Native: An Interview with Wendell Berry" was published in Appalachian Journal, Volume 31, Issues 3–4, in Spring-Summer 2004.