PORT ROYAL, KENTUCKY — Wendell Berry died at age 92 at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. His daughter Mary Berry confirmed the death on Monday.

Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1934. He moved with his family to New Castle, Kentucky, as a child where his father practiced law. As a boy, he worked on his grandfather's farm.

His family farmed land in Henry County for seven generations before him. He graduated from the Millersburg Military Institute as a teenager and attended the University of Kentucky.

Berry attended Stanford University and received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from the institution in 1958. He served as a visiting lecturer at Stanford for one year after receiving the fellowship. By age 28, he worked as an English professor at New York University.

He lived in New York in the early 1960s but left his position at the university two years into his career to return to Henry County. He bought Lanes Landing in Kentucky and settled there.

Berry published more than 40 books during his career. His works included the novel Nathan Coulter, the novel A Place on Earth, and the short story collection Stand By Me. He wrote the anthology A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.

Other titles included the novel Andy Catlett: Early Travels, published in 2006, and the farming manifesto The Unsettling of America, published in 1977. In that 1977 text, he argued that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline.

Berry handwritten his work and typed it on a typewriter he purchased new in 1956. He never owned a computer. He and his wife lived without television or phones. The couple installed solar units at their home in 2005.

Michael Pollan stated that his life was changed by Berry's declaration that eating is an agricultural act. Waters cited Berry as a favorite author. Berry offered reflections on his life and work in various writings. In an essay, Berry wrote that he had made a significant change in his relation to the place, noting that before it had been his by coincidence or accident, but now it was his by choice. He wrote that his return, which at first had been hesitant and tentative, grew wholehearted and sure, and that he had come back to stay and hoped to live there the rest of his life.

In a poem, he wrote: "Light and wind are running Over the headed grass As though the hill had Melted and now flowed." Another poem contained the lines: "In the name of ourselves we ride at the wheels of our engines, in the name of Plenty devouring all, the exhaust of our progress falling deadly on villages and fields we do not see. We are prepared for millions of little deaths."

Berry critiqued modern society in his novels. He wrote that increasingly over the last maybe 40 years, the thought had come to him that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world, and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. He also wrote that the world he knew as a boy was flawed, surely, but it was substantial and authentic, and that the households of his grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things, and that whatever came, came by somebody's work.

In a book, Berry wrote that the modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth, and that at each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and experts sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation. In other writing, he stated that he goes into the woods, and as he goes in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing he does, things fall into place, and he enters an order that does not exist outside, in the human spaces, and feels his life take its place among the lives of the trees, the annual plants, the animals and birds, the living of all these and the dead, that go and have gone to make the life of the earth.

Berry cut ties with the University of Kentucky after the school accepted $7 million for a new basketball dormitory from donors organized by a coal company president. He joined a sit-in at the governor's office in Kentucky in 2011 to protest strip-mining. In 2020, Berry and his wife Tanya filed a lawsuit objecting to the removal of a fresco by Ann Rice O'Hanlon from the University of Kentucky. Tanya Berry was the niece of the artist.

Berry received several honors. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2012. He became the first living author inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2015.

He was presented a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2016. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He did not receive a Pulitzer Prize or a National Book Award.

In an interview, Berry said that he thinks advising the young about a life course is probably not a responsible thing to do. He added that people should stop some place, and stay there, and learn the history of it, and the names of the plants and animals and the neighbors. Regarding his father's passing, Mary Berry said there is not enough she could say about him to do him justice.

Timeline

In 1956, he handwritten his work and typed it on a typewriter he purchased new in 1956. He received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University in 1958.

Berry wrote the essay A Native Hill, published in 1968. He also wrote the poem Against the War in Vietnam, published in 1968. He wrote the farming manifesto The Unsettling of America, published in 1977.

Waters wrote an introduction to Berry's 1989 essay The Pleasures of Eating. He wrote the poem June Wind, published in 2001.

What's New

Mary Berry confirmed Berry's death on Monday.

Reports also showed that Berry wrote the essay The Pleasures of Eating, published in 1989, and that Waters wrote an introduction to that 1989 essay. Further details emerged that Berry cut ties with the University of Kentucky after the school accepted $7 million for a new basketball dormitory from donors organized by a coal company president.

How Sources Differ

Sources differ on details regarding Berry's relationship with academic institutions. The primary source and stated that Berry left his position at New York University two years into his career to return to Henry County, Kentucky.

The primary source, and stated that Berry attended the University of Kentucky.

A court filing stated that Berry and his wife Tanya filed a lawsuit in 2020 objecting to the removal of a fresco by Ann Rice O'Hanlon from the University of Kentucky.

Why It Matters

Berry's work influenced prominent figures in food and agriculture. Alice Waters cited Berry as a favorite author and wrote an introduction to his 1989 essay The Pleasures of Eating. His critique of industrial agriculture and modern disconnection from the land shaped discussions on farming as a cultural and spiritual discipline.

Berry received national recognition for his contributions. In 2015, he became the first living author inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. He received a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2016 and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His death marks the end of a career that spanned more than 40 books and decades of activism.