Putting words where his philsophies lie

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.” – Wendell Berry

Berry, who had his 84^th birthday last month, is an environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer who also just happens to be one of America’s most prolific authors.  Whether it’s through his essays, short stories, poems or novels, his writing has served as an extended conversation about the pastoral life he values. According to him, the “good life” includes sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies, healthy rural communities, connection to place, and the pleasures of good food.   He once said all people should be interested in farming because “eating is an agricultural act.” 

A longtime leader for Earth Day, Berry’s book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, is considered          one of the key texts of the environmental movement.  

                         Recipient of both a National Humanities Medal and a Fellowship of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Berry cemented his position as one of America’s all-time great authors when he was named for the prestigious Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award for lifetime literary achievement.   In 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

The author of 31 nonfiction books, 15 books of fiction, and hundreds of essays, poems and short stories, Berry simply said, “Well, I’m a writer more than I am a talker.”

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