Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was an American novelist, poet, essayist, farmer and environmental thinker whose writing explored the relationships between people, land, community and agriculture. He was particularly known for his fiction set in the fictional Kentucky community of Port William and for influential works of nonfiction including The Unsettling of America. Over a career spanning more than six decades, he published more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and essays. 

Berry was born in Kentucky in 1934, the eldest of four children of Virginia Erdman Berry and John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and farmer. He grew up in Henry County, where generations of his family had farmed. After attending Millersburg Military Institute, he studied English at the University of Kentucky, receiving his B.A. in 1956 and M.A. in 1957. He married Tanya Amyx in 1957 and later studied creative writing at Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. 

After teaching in New York and spending time in Europe, Berry returned to Kentucky in 1964. He joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky and settled with his family on a farm near Port Royal, where writing and farming became inseparable parts of his life. His work repeatedly challenged industrial agriculture, consumerism and the erosion of rural communities while advocating careful stewardship of the land and a life rooted in place. 

Among his many honours, Berry received the National Humanities Medal and was selected as the 2012 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities. He died at his home in Port Royal on August 31, 2026, aged 92.