Wendell Berry

He was born to John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and official with the Burley Tobacco Growers Association; and his wife Virginia Erdman Berry. His family had a rich farming history which played a pivotal role in shaping up his thoughts as a child.

He enrolled in a secondary school at Millersburg Military Institute in 1948 from where he graduated after four years.

In 1952, he got admitted to University and passed out in 1957 after earning his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in English literature.

In 1957, he began teaching English at Georgetown College after completion of his studies, and soon after he entered Stanford University where he studied creative writing as a Wallace Stegner fellow.

During 1959–60, he taught creative writing at Stanford University and it was this time when he published his first novel ‘Nathan Coulter’ which was the first title in Port William series. It carries a brief description of the rural section of Kentucky, a place with which he had a lifelong fascination.

In 1961, he went to Italy and France on a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. There he met Wallace Fowlie, an American writer, translator and professor of Literature.

During 1962–64, he taught English to freshman at University Heights Campus in the Bronx at New York University. At the end of it, he began teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. It was during this time that he met writer Guy Davenport, writer and mystic Thomas Merton, and photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard.

In 1964, he published his first poetry book called ‘November twenty six nineteen hundred sixty three’. It contained a single poem memorializing the death of the President John F. Kennedy.

On February 9, 2003, his essay, ‘A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States’, was published as a full page advertisement placed by ‘Orion Magazine’ in the New York Times

On January 4, 2009, he published an open edition article titled ‘50-Year Farm Bill’ in New York Times along with the president of the Land Institute, Wes Jackson. It concentrated chiefly on the National Agricultural Policy based on ecological principles. Soon in July, he travelled to Washington DC for its promotion among the general as well as rural public.

In October, 2009, he appealed for the cancellation of construction of a coal-burning power plant in Clark County, Kentucky, in a joint protest along with the Berea-based Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF) and several other non-profit organizations.

In February, 2011, he insisted Kentucky government to put an end to mountaintop removal coal mining along with the 14 other protestors as a part of the environmental group ‘Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’. He was locked up in the Kentucky governor’s office for this remonstration.

In 2011, he established ‘The Berry Center’ at New Castle, Kentucky to bring into light issues of land use, farm policy, local food infrastructure, urban education about farming, and farmer education that is lacking in Kentucky and the country as a whole.