Wendell Berry

Poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist Wendell Berry was born on August 5, 1934, in New Castle, Kentucky. He attended the University of Kentucky at Lexington where he received a BA in English in 1956 and an MA in 1957.

Berry is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and novels. His collections of poetry include New Collected Poems (Counterpoint, 2012); Given (Shoemaker Hoard, 2005); The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 1988); A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Counterpoint, 1997); Entries: Poems (Pantheon, 1994); Traveling at Home (North Point Press, 1989); Collected Poems 1957–1982 (North Point Press, 1985); Clearing (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977); and The Broken Ground (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964).

Berry’s novels include A World Lost (Counterpoint, 1996); Remembering (North Point Press, 1988); and The Memory of Old Jack (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974). Berry is also the author of prose collections, such as The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (Counterpoint, 2004); Another Turn of the Crank (Counterpoint, 1995); Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community: Eight Essays (Pantheon, 1993); Standing on Earth: Selected Essays (Golgonooza Press, 1991); and A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).

About his work, a reviewer for the Christian Science Monitor wrote: “Berry’s poems shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder life.”

Among Berry’s honors and awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, a Lannan Foundation Award, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Berry has taught at New York University and at the University of Kentucky. He lives on a farm in Port Royal, Kentucky.