12.23.2009

Wendell Berry - muddite hero

Wendall Berry doesn't just talk the talk he walks the walk and always has. He's not afraid to take on the most powerful agribusiness interests nor is he afraid of getting his hands muddy. Berry has spent his entire adult life writing about and working as a small organic farmer. After nearly 30 years of hard work on my own small organic farm nobody has earned my respect more than Berry has.

Wendell Berry is the author of more than forty books of essays, poetry and novels. He has worked a farm in Henry County, Kentucky since 1965. He is a former professor of English at the University of Kentucky and a past fellow of both the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has received numerous awards for his work, including an award from the National Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters in 1971, and most recently, the T.S. Eliot Award.

"It is hard to say whether I like this writer better as a poet, an essayist, or a novelist. He is all three, at a high level." - Wallace Stegner

"A Kentucky farmer and writer, and perhaps the great moral essayist of our day." - New York Review of Books

"Berry is the prophetic American voice of our day." - Christian Science Monitor

"My work has been motivated by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place." - Wendell Berry

Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky - Internet Resources
 
"leadership from the bottom"- Wendell Berry