Wendell Erdman Berry was born on August 5,1934 and is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer.
25 Facts About Wendell Berry
2.
Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land and The Unsettling of America.
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Wendell Berry is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012.
4.
Wendell Berry is a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, since 2014, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
5.
Wendell Berry has farmed, resided, and written at Lane's Landing ever since.
6.
Wendell Berry has written about his early experiences on the land and about his decision to return to it in essays such as "The Long-Legged House" and "A Native Hill".
7.
Wendell Berry has written at least twenty-five books of poems, sixteen volumes of essays, and twelve novels and short story collections.
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Wendell Berry's writing is grounded in the notion that one's work ought to be rooted in and responsive to one's place.
9.
Wendell Berry delivered "A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" during the Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft on February 10,1968, at the University of Kentucky in Lexington:.
10.
Wendell Berry debated former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz at Manchester University in Manchester, Indiana in November 1977.
11.
On June 3,1979, Wendell Berry engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience against the construction of a nuclear power plant at Marble Hill, Indiana.
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On February 9,2003, Wendell Berry's essay titled "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States" was published as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times.
13.
On March 2,2009, Wendell Berry joined over 2,000 others in non-violently blocking the gates to a coal-fired power plant in Washington, DC No one was arrested.
14.
In October 2009, Wendell Berry combined with "the Berea-based Kentucky Environmental Foundation, along with several other non-profit organizations and rural electric co-op members" to petition against and protest the construction of a coal-burning power plant in Clark County, Kentucky.
15.
On December 20,2009, due to the University of Kentucky's close association with coal interests in the state, Wendell Berry removed his papers from the university.
16.
On September 28,2010, Wendell Berry participated in a rally in Louisville during an EPA hearing on how to manage coal ash.
17.
Wendell Berry was part of the environmental group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth that began their sit-in on Friday and left at midday Monday to join about 1,000 others in a mass outdoor rally.
18.
Wendell Berry's nonfiction serves as an extended conversation about the life he values.
19.
The threats Wendell Berry finds to this good simple life include: industrial farming and the industrialization of life, ignorance, hubris, greed, violence against others and against the natural world, the eroding topsoil in the United States, global economics, and environmental destruction.
20.
Wendell Berry is an anti-capitalist moralist and a writer of praise for what he admires: the quiet, mostly uncelebrated labor and affection that keep the world whole and might still redeem it.
21.
Wendell Berry is an acerbic critic of what he dislikes, particularly modern individualism, and his emphasis on family and marriage and his ambivalence toward abortion mark him as an outsider to the left.
22.
Wendell Berry, who describes himself as "a person who takes the Gospel seriously," has criticized Christian organizations for failing to challenge cultural complacency about environmental degradation, and has shown a willingness to criticize what he perceives as the arrogance of some Christians.
23.
Wendell Berry is an advocate of Christian pacifism, as shown in his book Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings About Love, Compassion and Forgiveness.
24.
The Port William stories allow Wendell Berry to explore the human dimensions of the decline of the family farm and farm community, under the influence of expanding post-World War II agribusiness.
25.
Wendell Berry is one of very few living writers currently featured in the Library of America catalog.