Wendell Erdman Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, USA on August 5, 1934. He is an American writer, farmer and poet who helps people in diagnosing nature and what the problems they are facing and try to solve that in a constructive way.
Berry was the first of four children from John Marshall Berry. John Berry is a tobacco farmer and lawyer in Henry County, Kentucky and his mother name is Virginia Erdman Berry.
The family of Wendell Berry has been farming in Henry County for at least five generation. Berry attended high school at the Millersburg Military Institute and later earned a B.A. in 1956 and M.A. in 1957 in English literature at the University of Kentucky.
He completed his master’s degree and was subsequently married to Tanya Amyx in 1957. In 1958, he attended Stanford University’s creative writing program as a Fellow of Wallace Stegner.
Wendell Berry engaged in a nonviolent protest against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Marble Hill, Indiana in June 3rd, 1979. On February 9, 2003, Berry wrote an article entitled “Citizen Response to the United States National Security Strategy”. It was published as a full-page ad in The New York Times.
Wes Jackson, president of The Land Institute together with Wendell Berry finally published an opinion article in The New York Times “A 50-Year Farm Bill.” in January 2009. Wendell Berry and Fred Kirschenmann, from The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, gathered in Washington DC to promote the idea in July 2009.
Also in the same year in January 2009, Berry released a statement against the death penalty and in November 2009, Berry and 38 other writers from Kentucky wrote to Governor Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway asking them to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in the state the.
On May 22, 2009, Berry, in Louisville, spoke out against the existence of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). In October 2009, Berry joined the “Berea-based Kentucky Environmental Foundation along with several nonprofit organizations and members of the rural electric cooperative. They are doing a petition to protest against the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Clark County, Kentucky, United States and finally on the February 28th on the same year, the Kentucky Public Service Commission approved the cancellation of this power plant.
On September 28, 2010, Wendell Berry also joined the demonstration in Louisville during an EPA trial on how to manage coal ash. Wendell Berry along with other protesters, spent the weekend of 12 February 2011 locked in the Kentucky governor’s office. They demand an end to the removal of coal at the top of the mountain.
In 2011, The Berry Center was established in New Castle, Kentucky, which aims to focus on transforming the destructive agricultural system of nature.
Together with W. S. Merwin, Berry is one of two surviving authors currently listed in the American Library catalog. The fiction books he has published are Nathan Coulter in 1960, A Place on Earth in 1967/83, The Memory of Old Jack in 1974, Remembering in 1988, A World Lost 1996, Jayber Crow in 2000, Hannah Coulter in 2004, Andy Catlett: Early Travels in 2006.
Wendell Berry is the recipient of The National Humanities Medal, an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and is a lecturer from Jefferson for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the Separate Achievement Award of Richard C. Holbrooke 2013. On January 28, 2015, Berry became the first living writer inducted in the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
Can be concluded that Wendell Berry defines patriotism as a form of love for the land where we as humans live and stand on it. He promotes responsible agriculture campaigns and thinks it’s the only permanent way to recover the ever-worsening earth. Let us fulfill his sincere mission of Wendell Berry by taking care of the environment and the earth from the damage caused by a lot of carelessness of the people towards this earth.
