Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry
Berry and solar panels on his farm in Henry County, Kentucky, December 2011
Born	(1934-08-05) August 5, 1934 (age 82) Henry County, Kentucky, U.S.
Occupation	Poet, farmer, writer, activist, academic
Nationality	American
Education	University of Kentucky (B.A; M.A., English, 1957)
Genre	Fiction, poetry, essays
Subject	agriculture, rural life, community

Wendell E. Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Berry was the first of four children born to John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and tobacco farmer in Henry County, Kentucky, and Virginia Erdman Berry. The families of both parents had farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. Berry attended secondary school at Millersburg Military Institute and then earned a B.A. and M.A. in English at the University of Kentucky, where, in 1956, he met another Kentucky writer-to-be, Gurney Norman. In 1957, he completed his M.A. and married Tanya Amyx. In 1958, he attended Stanford University's creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, studying under Stegner in a seminar that included Edward Abbey, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Ernest Gaines, Tillie Olsen, and Ken Kesey. Berry's first novel, Nathan Coulter, was published in April 1960.