Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was born in 1934 in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was a lawyer and tobacco farmer, and both sides of his family had farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English at the University of Kentucky and in 1957 married Tanya Amyx. In 1958 he studied creative writing at Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He taught English at New York University and, from 1964, creative writing at the University of Kentucky. On July 4, 1965, he and his family moved to Lane's Landing, a small farm near Port Royal in Henry County, where he farmed and wrote for the rest of his life. His essays, including The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Gift of Good Land (1981), defend small family farms, local communities and care for the land. His novels and stories, such as Jayber Crow (2000) and Hannah Coulter (2004), are set in the imagined Kentucky town of Port William. He received the National Humanities Medal. He died at home in Port Royal on August 31, 2026, aged 92.

Wendell Berry is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Calls himself a Christian and 'a person who takes the Gospel seriously', while criticizing Christian organizations. Source: Wikipedia