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Ed. D. dissertation from Spalding University.

First published in 1996. Kentucky and Kentuckians are full of stories, which may be why so many present-day writers have Kentucky roots. Whether they left and returned, like Wendell Berry and Bobbie Ann Mason, or adopted Kentucky as home, like James Still and Jim Wayne Miller, or grew up and left for good, like Michael Dorris and Barbara Kingsolver, they have one connection: Kentucky has influenced their writing and their lives. L. Elisabeth Beattie explores this influence in twenty intimate interviews. Conversations with Kentucky Writers was more than three years in the making, as Beattie traveled across the state and beyond to capture oral histories on tape. Her exhaustive knowledge of these authors helped her draw out personal revelations about their work, their lives, and the nature of writing. When Still concludes his interview with "I believe I've told you more than anybody," he could be speaking for any of Beattie's subjects. Aspiring writers will learn that Mason submitted twenty stories to the New Yorker before one was accepted, and that Still wrote articles for Sunday school magazines. There's plenty of advice: Dorris tells budding authors to get real jobs, keep journals, and read everything, even cereal boxes, and Marsha Norman reminds playwrights that "it is not the business of the theater to provide writers with a living." Kingsolver advises, "Read good stuff and write bad stuff until eventually what you're writing begins to approximate what you're reading." Beattie's collection includes striking self-portraits of such writers as Sue Grafton, Leon Driskell, James Baker Hall, Fenton Johnson, George Ella Lyon, Taylor McCafferty, Ed McClanahan, Sena Naslund, Chris Offutt, Lee Pennington, and Betty Layman Receveur.What most distinguishes these moving conversations from other author interviews is their focus on creativity, on the teaching of writing, and on the authors' strong sense of place.As Wade Hall writes in his foreword, all twenty writers recognize that their works have been significantly influenced by their "Kentucky experience." This collection offers insights into Kentucky's rich and flowering literary heritage.

First published in 1999. In this sequel to Conversations with Kentucky Writers, L. Elisabeth Beattie brings together in-depth interviews with sixteen of the state's premiere wordsmiths. This new volume offers the perspectives of poets, journalists, and scholars as they discuss their views on creativity, the teaching of writing, and the importance of Kentucky in their work. They talk frankly about how and why they do what they do. The writers speak for themselves, and their thoughts come alive on the page. Beattie's interviews reveal the allegiances and alliances among Kentucky writers that have shaped literary trends by bringing together people with shared interests, values, subjects, and styles. The interviewees include authors who are captivated in other writers and in what they have to say about the process and craft of writing; educators who are interested in Kentucky writers and what their work reveals about the nature of creativity; and historians who are concerned with Kentucky's literary and cultural heritage. The interviews reveal patterns in Kentucky literature from mid-century to the millennium, as authors talk about how their sense of place has changed over the decades and reveal the ways in which the roots of Kentucky writing have produced a literary flowering at the century's end. Includes: Sallie Bingham, Joy Bale Boone, Thomas D. Clark, John Egerton, Sarah Gorham, Lynwood Montell, Maureen Morehead, John Ed Pearce, Ameilia Blossom Pegram, Karen Robards, Jeffrey Skinner, Frederick Smock, Frank Steele, Martha Bennett Stiles, Richard Taylor, and Michael Williams.

In 1995, Kentucky governor Brereton Jones granted parole to ten women who had been convicted of killing, conspiring to kill, or assaulting the men who had abused them for years. The media began referring to them as the "Sisters in Pain," a name they embraced. These are their stories. Linda Elisabeth Beattie and Mary Angela Shaughnessy's interviews of seven of the Sisters in Pain detail the physical, sexual, or psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends, battery beyond comprehension. Anyone who has ever asked, "Why don't they just leave?" will come to understand the interconnected strands of abuse that make just living through another day a personal triumph. Beattie and Shaughnessy address the pervasive nature of domestic violence in America and explore the legal ramifications of fighting back. Their interviews with the Sisters in Pain reveal the ways in which these women have picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and learned to face the future.

Writers love to tell stories, so when L. Elisabeth Beattie remarked that her next book ought to be a Kentucky writers' cookbook, Betty Layman Receveur replied, "Actually, all my sons ever demand of me is my pound cake." Adding a cup of this and a pinch of that, Beattie cooked up Savory Memories, a collection of twenty-two essays about particular dishes that call up warm memories in the writers. Featuring recipes and memories from writers such as Joy Bale Boone, George Ella Lyon, Ronni Ludy, Ed McClanahan, Sena Jeter Naslund, and Richard Taylor, this is both a cookbook and a compendium of sentiments. This warm and enjoyable blending of essays, illustrations, and recipes is leavened with humor and laden with nostalgia. As much as the food, these writers celebrate the personalities who lovingly prepared and provided their favorite dishes, sustaining life and helping to shape the personas of the authors themselves. A collection of highly personal recollections, Savory Memories is a veritable smorgasbord of delights.

After more than a few years of researching art and writing ekphrastic poetry, B. Elizabeth Beck gifts us with her own work of art. Painted Daydreams is a book about the kinship between artists and a true celebration of the creative spirit. This poetry collection is not only inspired, but it also creates inspiration, as well

Poems. "In insignificant white girl, Elizabeth Beck provides compelling witness to the violence – and its tragic after effects that too many girls suffer, without the ability to give it this kind of important voice. In stunning imagery, Beck sheds light on what can only be called crimes against humanity." -Sue William Silverman, author of Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You. Review found on author's website.

Poems. Second Edition. "Mysterious and musical, stitched with an almost-narrative that disappears and reappears like thread, Interiors offers a glimpse into one poet’s transformational journey." -George Ella Lyon, poet laureate of Kentucky. Author of She Let Herself Go. "Interiors is full of doorways, transoms, locks, and entryways as well as a claw-footed tub – and poems that explore the furnishings of the mind and heart. Elizabeth Beck’s first book of artful poems centers on the theme of “writing about writing about my life”. Her house is our house." -Richard L. Taylor, past poet laureate Kentucky. Reviews found on author's website. First edition published in 2013.

Summer Adventure with Phish. Follow these characters as they jump on the train for Summer Tour '19. When Sam Abernathy spends the summer in Maywood, Ohio in the Calico House with his Aunt Karen, he meets a group of phans who change his life. Chris serves as Captain, ala Neal Cassady. Claire is an artist who installs her work at SPAC. Taylor is a poet and Alex holds down the group as wise sage. Augmented with set lists and detailed show accounts, this piece of fiction reads like memoir. A must-read for any Phish Phan.

Poems; 122 pages.

Poems; 162 pages.

Poems, 177 pages.

Poems; 181 pages.

Today, the name Marion Miley is largely unrecognizable, but in the fall of 1941, she was an internationally renowned golf champion, winning every leading women's tournament except the elusive national title. This unassuming twenty-seven-year-old woman was beloved by all she met, including celebrities like jazz crooner Bing Crosby. With ambitions to become a doctor, it seemed Marion Miley was headed for greatness. But on September 28, 1941, six gunshots broke through the early morning stillness of the Lexington Country Club. Marion had been brutally murdered. News of her death spread quickly, headlining major papers such as the New York Times. Support flooded in, spurring police in the hunt for her killers. However, the bombing of Pearl Harbor less than two months later would redirect public attention and sweep Marion's story to a forgotten corner of time -- until now. The Murder of Marion Miley recounts the ensuing manhunt and trial, exploring the impact of class, family, and opportunity in a world where steely determination is juxtaposed with callous murderous intent. As the narrative voice oscillates between Marion's father, her best friend, and one of her killers, an ever-present specter of what could have been -- not just for Marion, but for all those affected by her tragic death -- is conjured. Drawing on intensive research typical of the true crime genre, Beverly Bell produces a passionate homage to one of the greatest golfers of the early twentieth century.

In the breathtaking new thriller from David Bell, bestselling author of Since She Went Away and Somebody I Used to Know, the fate of two missing teenage girls becomes a father's worst nightmare ... Just a year and a half after the tragic death of his wife, Bill Price's fifteen-year-old daughter, Summer, and her best friend, Haley, disappear. Days later, the girls are found in a city park. Haley is dead at the scene, while Summer is left beaten beyond recognition and clinging to life. As Bill holds vigil over Summer's bandaged body, the only sound the unconscious girl can make is one cryptic and chilling word: No. And the more time Bill spends with Summer, the more he wonders what happened to her. Or if the injured girl in the hospital bed is really his daughter at all. When troubling new questions about Summer's life surface, Bill is not prepared for the aftershocks. He'll soon discover that both the living and the dead have secrets. And that searching for the truth will tear open old wounds that pierce straight to the heart of his family ...

A missing child is every parent's nightmare. What comes next is even worse in this riveting thriller from the bestselling author of Bring Her Home and Layover. Tom and Abby Stuart had everything: a perfect marriage, successful careers, and a beautiful twelve-year-old daughter, Caitlin. Then one day she vanished without a trace. For a while they grasped at every false hope and followed every empty lead, but the tragedy ended up changing their lives, overwhelming them with guilt and dread, and shattering their marriage. Four years later, Caitlin is found alive--dirty and disheveled, yet preternaturally calm. She won't discuss where she was or what happened. And when the police arrest a suspect connected to the disappearance, Caitlin refuses to testify, leaving the Stuarts with a choice: Let the man who may be responsible for destroying their lives walk away, or take matters into their own hands. And when Tom decides to try to uncover the truth for himself, he finds that nothing that has happened yet can prepare him for what he is about to discover.

The past has arrived uninvited at Jason Danvers's door in the form of his younger sister, Hayden, a former addict who severed all contact with her family as her life spiraled out of control. Now she's clean and sober but in need of a desperate favor--she asks Jason and his wife to take care of her teenage daughter for forty-eight hours while she handles some business in town. But Hayden never returns. Her disappearance brings up more unresolved problems from Jason's past, including the abrupt departure of his best friend on the night of their high school graduation twenty-seven years earlier. When a body is discovered in the woods, the mysteries of his sister's life--and possible death--deepen. One by one these events will shatter every expectation Jason has ever had about families, about the awful truths that bind them, and the secrets that should be taken to the grave.

Elizabeth Hampton has not spoken to her family in weeks when she gets the phone call. Her mother has been found dead under suspicious circumstances. But who would want to kill a kind old woman who stayed at home to care for her son Ronnie's special needs? And just why did her mother recently change her Will? The police tell Elizabeth that this is not only a murder investigation - but that her brother Ronnie is the prime suspect. Desperate to prove her brother's innocence, Elizabeth begins to unravel family secrets and dark double lives - leading to the dangerous truth behind her own identity ...

Twenty-five years after a child's murder shocks a small Ohio town, new evidence forces everyone to question what they believe in this tense thriller from the bestselling author of Bring Her Home and Cemetery Girl. Janet Manning has been haunted by the murder since the day she lost sight of her four-year-old brother in the park. Now, with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Justin's death looming, a detective and a newspaper reporter have started to ask questions, opening old wounds and raising new suspicions. Could the man convicted of the murder--who spent more than two decades in prison--really be innocent? Janet's childhood friend and high school crush, who was in the park with her that day, has returned to Dove Point, where he is wrestling with his own conflicted memories of the events. And a strange man appears at Janet's door in the middle of the night, claiming to know the truth. Soon, years of deceit will be swept away, and the truth about what happened to Janet's brother will be revealed. And the answers that Janet has sought may be found much closer to home than she ever could have imagined.

Joshua Fields' life is a series of departures, arrivals, and airports. But during yet another layover, he meets Morgan, with whom he feels an immediate connection. When it s time for their flights, Morgan kisses him and laments that she'll never see him again. Joshua makes the impulsive decision to follow her, and buys a ticket for her flight. He s surprised to discover that she has been reported as missing. On the plane, Morgan is a completely different person, their connection seemingly gone. Once they re back on the ground, she slips away. Joshua sets out to discover the truth about why Morgan is on the run, but with every mystery solved, another rears its head.

When her mother is murdered, a woman is propelled into a twisted world of danger and double lives in this gripping psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Somebody's Daughter and Cemetery Girl. Leslie Hampton always cared for her troubled son Ronnie's special needs and assumed that her daughter Elizabeth would take him in when the time came. When Leslie dies unexpectedly, Elizabeth is consumed by grief. Then police discover that Leslie was strangled, and they immediately suspect that one of Ronnie's outbursts took a tragic turn. Elizabeth can't believe that her brother is capable of murder, but who else could have had a motive to kill their quiet, retired mother? More questions arise when a stranger is named in Leslie's will: a woman also named Elizabeth. As the family's secrets unravel, a man from Leslie's past who claims to have all the answers shows up, but those answers might put Elizabeth and those she loves the most in mortal danger.

Ryan Francis' old friend Blake Norton asks him to help keep his affair a secret by retrieving an incriminating item from the woman's home. Ryan refuses to help, until Blake threatens to reveal his deepest and darkest secret. At the woman's house, Ryan learns two things: he knows her, and she is dead on her bedroom floor. With the sound of police sirens rapidly approaching, Ryan flees, wondering why his old friend was setting him up for murder. Determined to keep his life intact and to clear his name, Ryan can't rest until he finds out who the real murderer is - but solving the crime may lead him closer to home than he ever could have imagined.

Three months ago, Jenna was supposed to meet her lifelong friend Celia. But when Jenna arrived late, she found that Celia had disappeared, and hasn't been seen again. The only piece of evidence is a lone diamond earring found where they were planning to meet. And even though Jenna has obsessively surfed message boards devoted to missing persons cases, she is no closer to finding any answers. But when her son's new girlfriend disappears too, long-buried secrets finally come to light and a stricken Jenna begins to unwind the tangled truth.

When Michael Frazier's ex-wife, Erica, shows up on his doorstep pleading for help, she drops a bombshell that threatens to rip his family apart: Erica's nine-year-old daughter is missing - and Michael is the father. Unable to quickly determine if Erica is telling the truth, and unwilling to leave the little girl's fate to chance, Michael has no choice but to follow the elusive trail of the child he has always wanted and never knew he had. But finding Felicity comes at a price - the closer Michael gets to the truth, the further into jeopardy his marriage falls and the faster his family begins to unravel. As lies that span a decade bubble to the surface and the window for Felicity's safe return closes, Michael will have just a few short days to decide who can be trusted and who is hiding the truth.

When Nick Hansen sees the young woman at the grocery store, his heart stops. She is the spitting image of his college girlfriend, Marissa Minor, who died in a campus house fire twenty years earlier. But when Nick tries to speak to her, she acts skittish and rushes off. The next morning the police arrive at Nick's house and show him a photo of the woman from the store. She's been found dead, murdered in a local motel, with Nick's name and address on a piece of paper in her pocket. Convinced there's a connection between the two women, Nick enlists the help of his college friend Laurel Davidson to investigate the events leading up to the night of Marissa's death. But the young woman's murder is only the beginning . . . and the truths Nick uncovers may make him wish he never doubted the lies.

After the tragic death of his wife and child five years ago, Connor Nye has written his second novel and is guaranteed tenure, feeling his life is back on track. There's just one problem: Connor didn't write the novel. His missing student did. And someone knows. And wants to make him pay. When the police arrive at his door, asking questions about a murder from two years ago because of the striking similarity to the crime in his book, Connor realises he's in over his head. To clear his name he has to unravel the frightening secrets buried in the manuscript.

When she was a small child, Tracy Weaver witnessed the unsolved murder of a young woman. Several years later, while attending college, she is horrified when she recognizes the murderer in a political commercial on television.In the middle of the night on a farm in rural southwest Ohio, five year old Tracy Weaver chased after her runaway kitten. Instead of finding her lost pet, she stumbled across three men who came out into the country to bury the body of a girl whom they had kidnapped from Indiana. To their dismay, the killers discovered that their victim was still alive. The leader finished her off, not knowing that a small child hid in the tall grass nearby. The murder remained undiscovered.Now, sixteen years later, Tracy attends college in the small town of Hamilton, Ohio. While at school she meets her soul mate and future husband, Paul, and their romance blossoms. One night while over at his apartment, she sees the killer in a political commercial. He is now the county prosecutor, and he's running for the state senate. Tracy soon finds herself in a race against time to somehow convince the authorities that their newly elected senator is a murderer before she becomes his next victim. What can she do? Who can she turn to? The Unexpected Witness is an old school romantic thriller about an ordinary Midwestern couple caught in the cross-hairs of a corrupt politician. It features a classic love story, strange twists, nail-biting suspense, real life comedy and tragedy, scoundrels becoming heroes, and more than one murder. This book contains violence, strong language, and adult themes, and it is not recommended for children under the age of thirteen.

Folklore, archaeological data, and first-person narratives contrast the wanton destruction of the eastern buffalo with the spirit and heroism of the early frontier.

Finding Daniel Boone is a unique tribute to America's frontier hero and offers closure to the greatest of all his mysteries: where he was buried. Part biography, part historical travelogue and eloquently narrated using fresh sources, rare forensic data and new field interviews, this is more than just a search for a man's bones. Fully re-creating Daniel's lost world, noted historian and author Ted Franklin Belue journeys along the famous Pathfinder's last trail, from Missouri and back to Kentucky, meeting a host of colorful characters. As little has been written about Boone's western days, where he lived the longest, this work examines the legendary woodsman's life as much as his death.

Covers a range of frontier existence, from daily life and survival to wars, exploits, and even flora and fauna. The pioneers and their lives are profiled in biographical sketches, giving a sampling of the personalities involved in the United States' westward expansion.

When he died in 1891, historian Draper left unfinished this massive biography of legendary Kentucky frontier hero Daniel Boone (1734-1820). Now Belue, who teaches history at Murray State University in Kentucky, has transcribed and annotated Draper's rambling manuscript, whose florid, hagiographic prose should not deter readers from some real merits. First, Draper, an indefatigable researcher, drew upon thousands of documents as well as interviews with white, Native American and black frontier dwellers to re-create Boone's colorful exploits, including his blazing of a trail through the Cumberland Gap; his construction of Boonesborough, the first permanent settlement in the "Far West"; and his dramatic rescue of his daughter Jemima and two other girls from Indians. Second, Draper's tome is a treasure trove of early Americana, covering Indian-Anglo wars and relations, the fur trade, the British presence and trans-Appalachian life, flora and fauna. Third, the 76 period drawings, engravings, photographs and maps offer revealing glimpses of both whites and Native Americans. And finally, Belue's entertaining and informative chapter notes diligently correct Draper's romanticization, offering instead a lifelong wanderer from home and family, a failed land speculator, an adventurer who watched his son tortured to death by Cherokees but who still sought accommodation with the Indians. Regrettably, Draper's text breaks off in 1778, but a chronology, epilogue and appendix sketch Boone's later exploits.

Filled with vivid details of Boone's exploits in Kentucky, as well as precise descriptions of the dress, religion, and language of early Americana.

Barry Bernson's book and DVD encompass nearly a half-century of award-willing journalism and personal reminiscences that will stay with you long after you trun off the evening TV news! 95 pages; illustrations; and 1 videodisc (approx. 30 minutes).

DVD video; approx. 127 minutes. Inspired by a shocking true story, a tenacious attorney uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths due to one of the world's largest corporations. In the process, he risks everything, his future, his family, and his own life to expose the truth. Originally released as a motion picture in 2019.

"The traditional neighborly work of killing a hog and preparing it as food for humans is either a fine art or a shameful mess. It requires knowledge, experience, skill, good sense, and sympathy," writes Wendell Berry in the essay portion of this book. In November 1979 as in years before, neighborly families gathered to do one of the ceremonious jobs of farm life: hog killing. Tanya Berry had been given a camera by New Farm magazine to photograph Kentucky farmers at work, and for two days at the farm of Owen and Loyce Flood in Henry County, she captured this culmination of a year's labor raising livestock. Here, in the resulting photographs, published for the first time, the American agrarian tradition is shown at its most harmonious, with strong men and women toiling with shared purpose towards a common wealth. Tanya Berry reveals intimate, expressive moments: the teams of young men hoisting animals by physical strength onto a gambrel and wagon for butchering, women grinding meat and mixing sausage and readying hams for preservation, and the solidarity of human beings coming together in reverence for the food they would eat, the lives and bodies which would be taken, and those which would be strengthened.

DVD video; approx. 82 minutes. "In 1965, Wendell Berry returned home to Henry County, where he bought a small farm house and began a life of farming, writing and teaching. This lifelong relationship with the land and community would come to form the core of his prolific writings. A half century later Henry County, like many rural communities across America, has become a place of quiet ideological struggle. In the span of a generation, the agrarian virtues of simplicity, land stewardship, sustainable farming, local economies and rootedness to place have been replaced by a capital-intensive model of industrial agriculture characterized by machine labor, chemical fertilizers, soil erosion and debt--all of which have frayed the fabric of rural communities. Writing from a long wooden desk beneath a forty-paned window, Berry has watched this struggle unfold, becoming one of its most passionate and eloquent voices in defense of agrarian life. Filmed across four seasons in the farming cycle, Look & see blends observational scenes of farming life, interviews with farmers and community members with evocative, carefully framed shots of the surrounding landscape. Thus, in the spirit of Berry's agrarian philosophy, Henry County itself will emerge as a character in the film--a place and a landscape that is deeply interdependent with the people that inhabit it"--Two Birds Film WWW site. Featuring Wendell Berry, Tanya Berry, Mary Berry, and Steve Smith.

Nine-year-old Andy Catlett embarks on a trip going alone by bus to visit his grandparents. It is Christmas 1943 and--as he sees modern life crowding out the old ways--those he meets become touchstones for his understanding of a precious and imperiled world. This beautiful short novel is a perfect introduction to Wendell Berry's rich and ever-evolving saga of the Port William Membership.

First published, 1992. "Berry richly evokes Port William's farmlands and hamlets, and his characters are fiercely individual, yet mutually protective in everything they do. . . . His sentences are exquisitely constructed, suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world." --New York Times Book Review Reissued as part of Counterpoint's celebration of beloved American author Wendell Berry, the five stories inFidelity return readers to Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, and the familiar characters who form a tight-knit community within. "Each of these elegant stories spans the twentieth century and reveals the profound interconnectedness of the farmers and their families to one another, to their past and to the landscape they inhabit." --The San Francisco Chronicle "Visionary . . . rooted in a deep concern for nature and the land, . . . [these stories are] tough, relentless and clear. In a roundabout way they are confrontational because they ask basic questions about men and women, violence, work and loyalty." --Hans Ostrom,The Morning News Tribune

Hannah Coulter is Wendell Berry's seventh novel and his first to employ the voice of a woman character in its telling. Hannah, the now-elderly narrator, recounts the love she has for the land and for her community. She remembers each of her two husbands, and all places and community connections threatened by twentieth-century technologies. At risk is the whole culture of family farming, hope redeemed when her wayward and once lost grandson, Virgil, returns to his rural home place to work the farm.

"This is a book about Heaven," says Jayber Crow, "but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell." It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town's barber. Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow's acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty. He began his search as a "pre-ministerial student" at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with "Old Grit," his profound professor of New Testament Greek. "You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out--perhaps a little at a time." "And how long is that going to take?" "I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps." "That could be a long time." "I will tell you a further mystery," he said. "It may take longer." Wendell Berry's clear-sighted depiction of humanity's gifts--love and loss, joy and despair--is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.

Old Jack, born just after the American Civil War and dying in contemporary times, spends one beautiful September day in Port William, his home since birth, remembering. The story tells of the most searing moments of Old Jack's life, particularly his debt to his sister Nancy and her husband Ben Feltner, Old Jack's model of what an honorable manhood and strength might be. "Few novelists treat both their characters and their readers with the kind of respect that Wendell Berry displays in this deeply moving account . . .The Memory of Old Jack is a slab of rich Americana." --The New York Times Book Review

Nathan Coulter, Wendell Berry's first book, was published in 1960 when he was twenty-seven. In his first novel, the author presents his readers with their first introduction to what would become Berry's life's work, chronicling through fiction a place where the inhabitants of Port William form what is more than community, but rather a "membership" in interrelatedness, a spiritual community, united by duty and bonds of affection for one another and for the land upon which they make their livelihood. When young Nathan loses his grandfather, Berry guides readers through the process of Nathan's grief, endearing the reader to the simple humanity through which Nathan views the world. Echoing Berry's own strongly held beliefs, Nathan tells us that his grandfather's life "couldn't be divided from the days he'd spent at work in his fields." Berry has long been compared to Faulkner for his ability to erect entire communities in his fiction, and his heart and soul have always lived in Port William, Kentucky. In this eloquent novel about duty, community, and a sweeping love of the land, Berry gives readers a classic book that takes them to that storied place.

Uncollected stories. Article from The Threepenny Review, 125(2011-04-01): 10-13

The story of the community of Port William is one of the great works in American literature. This collection, the tenth volume in the series, is the perfect occasion to celebrate Berry's huge achievement. It feels as if the entire membership--all the Catletts, Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, the Rowanberrys, Laura Milby, the preacher's wife, Kate Helen Branch, Andy's dog, Mike--nearly everyone returns with a story or two, to fill in the gaps in this long tale. Those just now joining the Membership will be charmed. Those who've attended before will be enriched. For more than fifty years, Wendell Berry has been telling us stories about Port William, a mythical town on the banks of the Kentucky River, populated over the years by a cast of unforgettable characters living in a single place over a long time. InA Place in Time, the stories dates range from 1864, when Rebecca Dawe finds herself in her own reflection at the end of the Civil War, to one from 1991 when Grover Gibbs' widow, Beulah, attends the auction as her home place is offered for sale. "And so it's all gone. A new time has come. Various ones of the old time keep faith and stop by to see me, Coulter and Wilma and a few others. But the one I wait to see is Althie. Seems like my whole life now is lived under the feeling of her hand touching me that day of the sale, and every day still. I lie awake in the night, and I can see it all in my mind, the old place, the house, all the things I took care of so long. I thought I might miss it, but I don't. The time has gone when I could do more than worry about it, and I declare it's a load off my mind. But the thoughts, still, are a kind of company." -- Beulah Gibbs

Published in 1967, we return to Port William during the Second World War to revisit Jayber Crow, the barber, Uncle Stanley, the gravedigger, Jarrat and Burley, the sharecroppers, and Brother Preston, the preacher, as well as Mat Feltner, his wife Margaret, and his daughter-in-law Hannah, whose son will be born after news comes that Hannah's husband Virgil is missing. "The earth is the genius of our life," Wendell Berry writes here. "The final questions and their answers lie serenely coupled in it."

Published in 1990 by the legendary North Point Press, this is a poetic novel of despair, hope, and the redemptive power of work. After losing his hand in an accident, Andy Catlett confronts an agronomist whose surreal vision can see only industrial farming. This vision is powerfully contrasted with that of modest Amish farmers content to live outside the pressures brought by capitalist postindustrialprogress, and by working the land to keep "away the three great evils, boredom, vice, and need." As Andy's perspective filters through his anger over his loss and the harsh city of San Francisco surrounding him, he begins to remember: the people and places that wait 2,000 miles away in his Kentucky home, the comfort he knew as a farmer, and his symbiotic relationship to the soil. Andy laments the modern shift away from the love of the land, even as he begins to accept his own changed relationship to the world. Wendell Berry's continued fascination with the power of memory continues in this treasured novel set in 1976.

Originally published in 2005,That Distant Land brings together twenty-three stories from the Port William Membership. Arranged in their fictional chronology, the book is not an anthology so much as it is a coherent temporal mapping of this landscape over time, revealing Berry's mastery of decades of the life lived alongside this clutch of interrelated characters bound by affection and followed over generations. This volume combines the stories found inThe Wild Birds (1985),Fidelity (1992), andWatch with Me (1994), together with a map and a charting of the complex and interlocking genealogies.

First published, 2002. A compilation of three of the shorter of Wendell Berry's works of book-length fiction:Nathan Coulter (1960),Remembering (1990), andA World Lost (1996).

Copyright, 1994. This volume of six linked stories and the novella from which the book derives its title is set in Port William from 1908 to the Second World War. Here Wendell Berry introduces two of his more indelible and poignant characters, Ptolemy Proudfoot and his wife Miss Minnie, remarkable for the comic and affectionate range that--with the mastery of this consummate storyteller working at the height of his powers--here approaches the Shakespearean. Tol Proudfoot is huge, outsized, in the tradition of the mythic. The three-hundred-pound farmer, personally imposing and unkempt, is also the most graceful of presences, reserved and gallant toward his tiny wife, the ninety-pound schoolteacher. Their contrasts are humorous, of course, and recall the tall tales of rural Americana. In the novellaWatch with Me, we are given a story of such depth, breadth, and importance it earns being listed as one of the most important short stories written in the American language during the twentieth century. "Wendell Berry writes with a good husbandman's care and economy . . . His stories are filled with gentle humor." âe*The New York Times Book Review "Berry is the master of earthy country living seen through the eyes of laconic farmers . . . He makes his stories shine with meaning and warmth." âe*The Christian Science Monitor "A small treasure of a book . . . part of a long line that descends from Chaucer to Katherine Mansfield to William Trevor." âe*Chicago Tribune

Whitefoot is a mouse, a small creature with "elegant whiskers" and a "reddish brindly tan" coat. She lives at the edge of the woods, where she knows, without a doubt, that she exists at the center of the world. What she doesn't know is that not far from her safe haven there is a river, and a world of such size and magnitude that she cannot even imagine it. One day, a burst of rain floods down on Whitefoot, lifting her in its currents and carrying her far from home. What happens next leads Whitefoot on a great adventure -- one in which she must encounter new experiences and challenges to her survival. The discovery of the universe around her, and her ability to survive within it, is a lesson that's sure to resonate with children and adults alike. Written by best-selling author, Wendell Berry, this beautiful volume is illustrated in fine detail with original drawings by acclaimed artist Davis Te Selle.

Copyright, 1986. "Berry is a superb writer. His sense of what makes characters tick is extraordinary . . . Short stories don't get any better than these." --People As part of Counterpoint's celebration of beloved American author Wendell Berry comes this reissue of his 1986 classic,The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership. Those stories include "Thicker Than Liquor", "Where Did They Go?", "It Wasn't Me", "The Boundary", "That Distant Land", and the titular "The Wild Birds." Spanning more than three decades, from 1930 to 1967, these wonderful stories follow Wheeler Catlett, and reintroduce readers to the beloved people who live in Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky.

"Brilliantly detailed characters and subtle social observations distinguish Berry's unassuming but powerful fifth novel....This is simple, soul-satisfying storytelling". Publishers Weekly "An elegiac celebration of the end of innocence....A sharp portrait of a small farming town nursing its secrets over several decades". Kirkus Reviews Andy Catlett is nine years old when his Uncle Andrew is murdered, and the tragedy destroys his sense of identity and order. Still haunted by the death as an adult, Andy works to gather details of the tragedy from the fragile memories of family, neighbors, and friends.

This popular collection features six essays on sustainability and stewardship from one of Americas most important cultural critics. Provocative, intimate, and thoughtful, Another Turn of the Crank reaches to the heart of Wendell Berry's concern for our nation, its communities, and their future.

"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him."--The Washington Post Book World. The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes--an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography--these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture. Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments? Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality and happiness of the whole community of creation.

Unfortunately, on occasions too frequent and destructive to enumerate, the teachings of Christ have been either ignored or distorted by the very people calling themselves Christian. Whether directed towards social intolerance or attitudes of warlike aggression, these right-wing citizens have claimed a power of influence that far exceeds their numbers. Blessed Are the Peacemakers collects the sayings of Jesus, selected by Wendell Berry, who contributes an essay of introduction. This is a book of inspiration and prayerful compassion, a ringing call to action at a time when our country and the world it once led stand at a dangerous crossroads.

Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry's caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. A progenitor of the slow food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. "Eating is an agriculture act," he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection that is essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture?

Compiled and written by Wendell and Laura Berry. 124 pages, illustrations, facsimiles, portraits.

Copyright 2003. Wendell Berry and David James Duncan present a haunting call to the collective conscience of the citizenry, and an urgent challenge to the meaning and workings of a true democracy. Their patriotic dissents expand the context for questions of terror and security, and present an enlightened understanding of the threats to -- and responsibilities of -- freedom.

Citizenship papers, 1. Materials prepared for presentation to authorities when making an application for citizenship. 2. Documents presented as proof of citizenship. There are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with "Patriot" offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry's application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life's blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Adams, Jefferson and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today's readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity. Citizenship Papers collects nineteen new essays, from celebrations of exemplary lives to critiques of American life, including "A Citizen's Response [to the new National Security Strategy]"--a ringing call of caution to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

"Copyright © 1970, 1972, 2012 Wendell Berry"--Title page verso. "This book is broad and leisurely and important. Something like the river itself on which Wendell Berry lives. It is full of wide and flowing thoughts and one thing leads to another in the manner that nature intended or used to. The language ranges from the grave and beautiful to the sharp and specific, depending on the need to express the vast variety of subjects he presents." The title of this book is taken from an account by Thomas F. Hornbein on his travels in the Himalayas. "It seemed to me," Horenbein wrote, "that here man lived in continuous harmony with the land, as much as briefly a part of it as all its other occupants." Wendell Berry's second collection of essays, A Continuous Harmony was first published in 1972, and includes the seminal "Think Little," which was printed in The Last Whole Earth Catalogue and reprinted around the globe, and the splendid centerpiece, "Discipline and Hope," an insightful and articulate essay making a case for what he calls "a new middle."

"The letters are valuable for ecologists, students, and teachers of contemporary American literature and for those of us eager to know how these two distant neighbors networked, negotiated, and remained friends." --San Francisco Chronicle "In Distant Neighbors, both Berry and Snyder come across as honest and open-hearted explorers. There is an overall sense that they possess a deep and questing wisdom, hard earned through land work, travel, writing, and spiritual exploration. There is no rushing, no hectoring, and no grand gestures between these two, just an ever-deepening inquiry into what makes a good life and how to live it, even in the depths of the machine age." --Orion Magazine In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to northern California, to a homestead in the Sierra foothills where he intended to build a house and settle on the land with his wife and young sons. He had just published his first book of essays,Earth House Hold. A few years before, after a long absence, Wendell Berry left New York City to return to land near his grandfather's farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived there with his wife as they restored an old house on their newly acquired homestead. In 1969 Berry had just published Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture and of the new environmental movement had yet to meet, but they knew each other's work, and soon they began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor could they have appreciated the impact they would have on one another. Snyder had thrown over all vestiges of Christianity in favor of becoming a devoted Buddhist and Zen practitioner, and had lived in Japan for a prolonged period to develop this practice. Berry's discomfort with the Christianity of his native land caused him to become something of a renegade Christian, troubled by the church and organized religion, but grounded in its vocabulary and its narrative. Religion and spirituality seemed like a natural topic for the two men to discuss, and discuss they did. They exchanged more than 240 letters from 1973 to 2013, remarkable letters of insight and argument. The two bring out the best in each other, as they grapple with issues of faith and reason, discuss ideas of home and family, worry over the disintegration of community and commonwealth, and share the details of the lives they've chosen to live with their wives and children. Contemporary American culture is the landscape they reside on. Environmentalism, sustainability, global politics and American involvement, literature, poetry and progressive ideals, these two public intellectuals address issues as broad as are found in any exchange in literature. No one can be unaffected by the complexity of their relationship, the subtlety of their arguments, and the grace of their friendship. This is a book for the ages.

In the twenty-four essays of this collection, Wendell Berry stresses the carefully modulated harmonics of indivisibility in culture and agriculture, the interdependence, the wholeness, the oneness, of man, animals, the land, the weather, and the family. To touch one, he shows, is to tamper with them all.Here he continues issues first raised in The Unsettling of America; the problems addressed there are still with us and the solutions no nearer to hand, Mr. Berry writes of his journeys to the highlands of Peru, the deserts of southern Arizona, and the Amish country to study traditional agricultural practices. He writes of homesteading, tools and their uses, horses and tractors, family work, land reclamation, diversified land use.In the title essay Mr. Berry draws parallels between the Christian notion of stewardship and the Buddhist doctrine of "right livelihood." He develops the compelling argument that the "gift" of good land has strings attached: the recipient has it only as long as he practices responsible stewardship.

Gregory Spaid, photographer; essay by Wendell Berry, introduction by Gene Logsdon. There is something plain about America that can be experienced most clearly in rural places. It can be heard in unpretentious speech, seen in unadorned buildings, and felt in wide open spaces. I have tried to photograph this humble quality in various places throughout the United States, but most often on the high plains of Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, and in Knox County, Ohio, where I live. There is a palpable melancholy in much of rural America, a sense of premature loss that may explain why so many of these photographs deal with abandonment. But there is also hope, which springs from the resilience of the land and its spiritual power in the lives of people. This is what I mean by grace.

"Includes 20 color plates of Hubbard's own paintings, along with several photographs of Anna and Harlan Hubbard. Wendell Berry is also the author of Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy. See other books in the series Blazer Lectures.

Reprint. Originally published: Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Reprinted with new afterword. "A profound, passionate, crucial piece of writing . . . Few readers, and I think, no writers will be able to read it without a small pulse of triumph at the temples: the strange, almost communal sense of triumph one feels when someone has written truly well . . . The statement it makes is intricate and beautiful, sad but strong." The Washington Post "Berry has produced one of the most humane, honest, liberating works of our time. It is a beautiful book. More than that, it has become at one stroke an essential book. Every American who can read at all should read it." The Village Voice With the expected grace of Wendell Berry comes The Hidden Wound, an essay about racism and the damage it has done to the identity of our country. Through Berry's personal experience, he explains how remaining passive in the face of the struggle of racism further corrodes America's potential. In a quiet and observant manner, Berry opens up about how his attempt to discuss racism is rooted in the hope that someday the historical wound will begin to heal.

Originally published: 1987. "Wherever we live, however we do so, we desperately need a prophet of responsibility; and although the days of the prophets seem past to many of us, Berry may be the closest to one we have. But, fortunately, he is also a poet of responsibility. He makes one believe that the good life may not only be harder than what we're used to but sweeter as well." The New York Review of Books. In Home Economics, Berry explores this process and continues to discuss what it means to make oneself "responsibly at home." As he argues, a measure of the health of the planet is economics--the health of its households.

"Berry's latest collection of essays is the reminiscence of a literary life. It is a book that acknowledges a lifetime of intellectual influences, and in doing so, positions Berry more squarely as a cornerstone of American literature . . . A necessary book. Here, Berry's place as the 'grandfather of slow food' or the 'prophet of rural living' is not questioned. This book ensures we understand the depth and breadth of Berry's art." San Francisco Chronicle "[A] stellar collection . . . Foodies, architects, transportation engineers, and other writers are adopting and adapting [Berry's] concepts, perhaps leading to what he envisions will one day be 'an authentic settlement of our country.'" The Oregonian In Imagination in Place, we travel to the local cultures of several writers important to Berry's life and work, from Wallace Stegner's great West and Ernest Gaines' Louisiana plantation life to Donald Hall's New England, and on to the Western frontier as seen through the Far East lens of Gary Snyder. Berry laments today's dispossessed and displaced, those writers and people with no home and no citizenship, but he argues that there is hope for the establishment of new local cultures in both the practical and literary sense. Berry laments today's dispossessed and displaced, those writers and people with no home and no citizenship, but he argues that there is hope for the establishment of new local cultures in both the practical and literary sense. Rich with Berry's personal experience of life as a Kentucky agrarian, the collection includes portraits of a few of America's most imaginative writers, including James Still, Hayden Carruth, Jane Kenyon, John Haines, and several others.

In these three poignant essays, prolific author Wendell Berry reflects deeply on the current sources of world hope and despair. Thoughts in the Presence of Fear, written in response to the September 11 attacks, has since been reprinted in 73 countries and seven languages. The three essays provide a much-needed road map to a full cultural recovery.

When he accepted the invitation to deliver the Jefferson Lecture--our nation's highest honor for distinguished intellectual achievement--Wendell Berry wanted a fresh start, not only in looking at the groundwork of the problems facing our nation and the earth itself, but in gaining hope from some examples of repair during Late Capitalism. The result is the greatest speech he has delivered in his six decades of public life. With this transcript of his speech, along with heretofore uncollected essays, It All Turns on Affection will take its place as another major testament to Berry's contribution to American thought. "These powerful, challenging essays show why Berry's vision of a sustainable, human-scaled society has proven so influential." Publishers Weekly

Discusses a rethinking of modern science and the humanities, proposing that the separation of these bodies of thought leads humanity to destructive behavior, including negative forms of materialism, colonialism, and industrialism.
"[A] scathing assessment . . . Berry shows that Wilson's much-celebrated, controversial pleas in Consilience to unify all branches of knowledge is nothing more than a fatuous subordination of religion, art, and everything else that is good to science . . . Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today." The Washington Post "I am tempted to say he understands [Consilience] better than Wilson himself . . . A new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism." The Christian Science Monitor. In Life Is a Miracle, the devotion of science to the quantitative and reductionist world is measured against the mysterious, qualitative suggestions of religion and art. Berry sees life as the collision of these separate forces, but without all three in the mix we are left at sea in the world.

First published in 1969 and out of print for more than twenty-five years,The Long-Legged House was Wendell Berry's first collection of essays, the inaugural work introducing many of the central issues that have occupied him over the course of his career. Three essays at the heart of this volume "The Rise," "The Long-Legged House," and "A Native Hill" are essays of homecoming and memoir, as the writer finds his home place, his native ground, his place on earth. As he later wrote, "What I stand for is what I stand on," and here we see him beginning the acts of rediscovery and resettling.

"Generously quoting many of Williams' best lines, tenderly confessing when he doesn't understand Williams (e.g., Williams' elusive 'variable foot'), and referring to his own life and work to clarify what he thinks about Williams, Berry produces a work of aesthetics more than evaluation, of love more than critique." --Booklist "Berry's superb study reminds us that Williams remains our contemporary not only for the lively cadences and fresh imagery that animate his poems, but for the ethical imperative of his example: to know ourselves as creatures of a particular place and, through that grounded knowledge, to develop the arts that will enable us to live in it over the long haul." --The Sewanee Review Acclaimed essayist and poet Wendell Berry was born and has always lived in a "provincial" part of the country without an established literary culture. In an effort to adapt his poetry to his place of Henry County, Kentucky, Berry discovered an enduringly useful example in the work of William Carlos Williams. In Williams' commitment to his place of Rutherford, New Jersey, Berry found an inspiration that inevitably influenced the direction of his own writing. Both men would go on to establish themselves as respected American poets, and here Berry sets forth his understanding of that evolution for Williams, who in the course of his local membership and service, became a poet indispensable to us all.

Originally published: 1981.

Originally published: 1992. In this new collection of essays, Wendell Berry continues his work as one of America's most necessary social commentators. With wisdom and clear, ringing prose, he tackles head-on some of the most difficult problems which face us as we near the end of the twentieth century. Berry begins the title essay with the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings as an example of a "process that has been well established and well respected for at least two hundred years--the process . . . of community disintegration." Community, a "locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature," bound by trust and affection, is "being destroyed by the desires and ambitions of both private and public life which for want of the intervention of community interests, are also destroying one another." He then moves on to elucidate connections between sexual brutality and economic brutality, and the role of art and free speech. Berry forcefully addresses America's unabashed pursuit of self-liberation, which he says is "still the strongest force now operating in our society." As individuals turn away from their community, they conform to a "rootless and placeless monoculture of commercial expectations and products," buying into the very economic system which is destroying the earth, our communities, and all they represent. Throughout the book Berry asks, What is appropriate? What is worth conserving from our past and preserving in our present? What is it to be human and truly connected to others? What does it mean to be free?

Originally published: 1983. In six elegant, linked literary essays, Berry considers the degeneration of language that is manifest throughout our culture, from poetry to politics, from conversation to advertising, and he shows how the ever-widening cleft between the words and their referents mirrors the increasing isolation of individuals and their communities from the land. "This skillfully conceived book is one of the strongest contemporary arguments for literary tradition: a challenging credo, un-glib, calmly assured, clearly illuminating--and required reading for those seriously interested in the interplay between literature, ethics, and morality." --Kirkus Reviews

"In 1973, James Baker Hall photographed these scenes and events of a Kentucky tobacco harvest. We look at them now with a sort of wonder, and with some regret, realizing that while our work was going on, powerful forces were at play that would change the scene and make "history" of those lived days, which were enriched for us then by their resemblance to earlier days and to days that presumably were to follow." -- Wendell Berry, from the book An insightful meditation on the shifting nature of humans' relationships with the land and with each other, Berry's essay laments the economic, political, and societal changes that have forever altered Kentucky's rich agricultural traditions. Berry also adds a deeply personal perspective to Hall's eloquent visual testimony. With a farm of his own nearby, Berry was a longtime friend and neighbor of the families shown in Hall's pictures and took part in their work swapping. In addition to detailing the repetitive, strenuous labor involved in harvesting a tobacco crop, he relates memories of stories told, laughs shared, meals savored, and brief moments of rest and refreshment well earned. Hall's striking photographs illuminate the characters and events that Berry describes. During the 1973 harvest, he photographed the rows stretching toward the horizon while laborers cut a tobacco crop, one plant at a time, until the last row was cut, hauled, and housed in the barn. These photographs powerfully convey the physical experiences of a Kentucky tobacco harvest: the heat of the sun, the dirt, and the people hard at work. James Baker Hall, former Kentucky Poet Laureate, is the author of many books, including The Total Light Process and Yates Paul, His Grand Fights, His Tootings. Wendell Berry is a poet, a novelist, a farmer, a conservationist, and a former professor of English. His books include The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Jayber Crow, Two More Stories of the Port William Membership, Life is a Miracle: An Essay against Modern Superstition, and Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work.

Originally published: 1971. Only someone who values land enough to farm a hillside for more than thirty years could write about a wild place so lovingly. Wendell Berry just as easily steps into Kentucky's Red River Gorge and makes the observations of a poet as he does step away to view his subject with the keen, unflinching eye of an essayist. The inimitable voice of Wendell Berry--at once frank and lovely--is our guide as we explore this unique wilderness. Located in eastern Kentucky and home to 26,000 acres of untamed river, rock formations, historical sites, unusual vegetation and wildlife, the Gorge very nearly fell victim to a man-made lake thirty years ago. "No place is to be learned like a textbook," Berry tells us, and so through revealing the Gorge's corners and crevices, its ridges and rapids, his words not only implore us to know more but to venture there ourselves. Infused with his very personal perspective and enhanced by the startling photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard,The Unforeseen Wilderness draws the reader in to celebrate an extraordinary natural beauty and to better understand what threatens it.

Since its publication in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline. Today's agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land--from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it. Sadly, his arguments and observations are more relevant than ever. Although "this book has not had the happy fate of being proved wrong," Berry writes, there are people working "to make something comely and enduring of our life on this earth." Wendell Berry is one of those people, writing and working, as ever, with passion, eloquence, and conviction.

The continuing war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations--contemporary American society is characterized by divisive anger, profound loss, and danger. Wendell Berry, one of the country's foremost cultural critics, responds with hope and intelligence in a series of essays that tackle the major questions of the day. Whose freedom are we considering when we speak of the "free market" or "free enterprise"? What is really involved in our national security? What is the price of ownership without affection? Berry answers in prose that shuns abstraction for clarity, coherence, and passion, giving us essays that may be the finest of his long career.

In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry, whom The Christian Science Monitor called the prophetic American voice of our day; conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. He speaks with sadness of the greedy consumption of this country's natural resources and the grim consequences Americans must face if current economic practices do not change drastically. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry's program presents convincing steps for America's agricultural and cultural survival.

"The reasoned and insistent exhortations of a man with a cause who, rather than mellowing with age and wisdom, continues to grow in forcefulness and vision." --Booklist Over the years, Wendell Berry has sought to understand and confront the financial structure of modern society and the impact of developing late capitalism on American culture. There is perhaps no more demanding or important critique available to contemporary citizens than Berry's writings -- just as there is no vocabulary more given to obfuscation than that of economics as practiced by professionals and academics. Berry has called upon us to return to the basics. He has traced how the clarity of our economic approach has eroded over time, as the financial asylum was overtaken by the inmates, and citizens were turned from consumers -- entertained and distracted -- to victims, threatened by a future of despair and disillusion. For this collection, Berry offers essays from the last twenty-five years, alongside new essays about the recent economic collapse, including "Money Versus Goods" and "Faustian Economics," treatises of great alarm and courage. He offers advice and perspective as our society attempts to steer from its present chaos and recession to a future of hope and opportunity. With urgency and clarity, Berry asks us to look toward a true sustainable commonwealth, grounded in realistic Jeffersonian principles applied to our present day.

Now available in paperback, the most comprehensive--and only author-authorized--Wendell Berry reader. "America's greatest philosopher on sustainable life and living." --Chicago Tribune; In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his fifty-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home. With grace and conviction, Wendell Berry shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy--the natural world will not allow it. Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.

64 pages.

35 pages.

Originally published, 1985. A longtime spokesman for conservation, common sense, and sustainable agriculture, Wendell Berry writes eloquently in several styles and methods. Among other literary forms, he is a poet of great clarity and sureness. His love of language and his care for its music are matched only by his fidelity to the subjects he has written of during his first twenty-five years of work: land and nature, the family and community, tradition as the groundwork for life and culture. His graceful elegies sit easily alongside lyrics of humor and biting satire. Husbandman and husband, philosopher and Mad Farmer, he writes of values that endure, of earthy truths and universal imagery. His vision is one of hope and memory, of determination and faithfulness. For this far-reaching yet portable volume, Berry has chosen nearly two hundred poems from his previous eight collections.

First published in 1971,The Country of Marriage is Wendell Berry's fifth volume of poetry. What he calls "an expansive metaphor" is "a farmer's relationship to his land as the basic and central relation of humanity to creation . . . Similarly, marriage is the basic and central community tie . . . And these relationships are in turn basic to, and may stand for, our relationship to God and to the sustaining mysteries and powers of creation." Each of the thirty-five poems in this collection is concerned with this metaphor. Most notably, there are more poems about the Mad Farmer, who advises us here to "every day do something that won't compute." Berry has here perfected a work that is immediately accessible but that becomes, as we read it again, always more satisfying, reverberant with manifold meanings.

"Designed and printed by Clifford Burke at Cranium Press, San Francisco, in an edition of 376 copies. Twenty-six copies are on mould made paper from the Wookey Hole Mill, and are numbered & signed by the poet. Fall 1974"--Colophon.

"Originally published 1994 by Pantheon Books"--Title page verso. In these poems, Wendell Berry combines plainspoken elegance with deeply felt emotion--this is work of both remembrance and regeneration. Whether writing as son of a dying father or as father of a daughter about to be wed, Berry plumbs the complexities of conflict, grief, loss, and love. He celebrates life from the domestic to the eternal, finding in the everyday that which is everlasting.

A collector's edition, and the perfect gift for the stalwart Wendell Berry fan. First printed in 1995 by Gray Zeitz of the beloved Larkspur Press in Monterey, Kentucky, this gift edition is a beautiful reproduction of Wendell Berry's book-length poem, illustrated with the original drawings by Carolyn Whitesel.

Copyright, 1970. The sanity and eloquence of these poems spring from the land in Kentucky where Wendell Berry was born, married, lives, farms, and writes. From classic pastoral themes both lyrical and reflective, to a verse play, to a dramatic narrative and the manic, entertaining, prescient ravings of Berry's Mad Farmer, these poems show a unity of language and consciousness, skill and sensitivity, that has placed Wendell Berry at the front rank of contemporary American poets.

143 pages.

For five decades Wendell Berry has been a poet of great clarity and purpose. He is an award-winning writer whose imagination is grounded by the pastures of his chosen place and the rooms and porches of his family's home. InGiven, the work is as rich and varied as ever before. With his unmistakable voice as the constant, he dexterously maneuvers through a variety of forms and themes--political cautions, love poems, a play in verse, and a long series of Sabbath Poems that resulted from Berry's recent Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation. Berry's work is one of devotion to family and community, to the earth and her creatures, to the memories of the past, and the hope of the future. His writing stands alongside the work of William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost as a rigorous American testament.

Originally published, 2008. "Berry has become ever more prophetic . . . In the Sabbaths of 2005-08 published here, Berry angrily mourns the degradation of the nation wrought by destruction of the land and the pursuit of wealth and power. He says that we must prepare to live without hope for a while, though in the very first of the Sabbaths, he prays not to lose love along with hope: 'Help me, please, to carry / this candle against the wind.' Despite anger and bitterness, he often recalls and teaches the beauty and propriety of creation, too. If he is a Jeremiah, he is also a David the psalmist." --Booklist No one writes like Wendell Berry. Whether essay, novel, story, or poem, his inimitable voice rings true, as natural as the land he has farmed in Kentucky for over 40 years. Following the widely praisedGiven, this new collection offers a masterful blend of epigrams, elegies, lyrics, and letters, with the occasional short love poem. Alternately amused, outraged, and resigned, Berry's welcome voice is the constant in this varied mix. The book concludes with a new sequence of Sabbath poems, works that have spawned from Berry's Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation. Berry's themes are reflections of his life: friends, family, the farm, the nature around us as well as within. He speaks strongly for himself and sometimes for the lost heart of the country. As he has borne witness to the world for eight decades, what he offers us now in this collection of poems is of incomparable value.

During the otherwise quiet course of his life as a poet, Wendell Berry has become "mad" at what contemporary society has made of its land, its communities, and its past. This anger reaches its peak in the poems of the Mad Farmer, an open-ended sequence he's found himself impelled to continue against his better instincts. These poems can take the shape of manifestos, meditations, insults, Whitmanic fits and ravings--these are often funny in spite of themselves. The Mad Farmer is a character as necessary, perhaps, as he is regrettable. Here are gathered the individual poems from Berry's various collections to offer the teachings of this amazing American voice. After the great success of the lovely Window Poems, Bob Baris of the Press on Scroll Road returns to design and produce an edition illustrated with etchings by Abigail Rover. James Baker Hall and William Kloefkorn offer poems here that also show how the Mad Farmer has escaped into the work of others. The whole is a wonderful testimony to the power of anger and humor to bring even the most terrible consequences into a focus otherwise impossible to obtain.

Here, Wendell Berry revisits for the first time his immensely popular Collected Poems, which The New York Times Book Review described as "a straightforward search for a life connected to the soil, for marriage as a sacrament, and family life" and "[returns] American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose." In New Collected Poems, Berry reprints the nearly two hundred pieces in Collected Poems, along with the poems from his most recent collections--Entries,Given, and Leavings--to create an expanded collection, showcasing the work of a man heralded by The Baltimore Sun as "a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau . . . a major poet of our time." Wendell Berry is the author of over forty works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. While he began publishing work in the 1960s,Booklist has written that "Berry has become ever more prophetic," clearly standing up to the test of time.

26 pages, illustrations.

Originally published: 1968. In Openings Wendell Berry speaks as a citizen, farmer, husband, and father and as a man deeply concerned about the state of the nation. He writes both to celebrate the natural world and to warn of the destruction we inflict on it. He writes about our responsibilities to ourselves and to one another and about America's misuses of power. He writes, in poems that are tender and passionate, of love for his wife and of the pleasures and anxieties of parenthood. In a highly acclaimed extended sequence entitled Window Poems he weaves together all of his dominant themes.

89 pages.

"These poems were previously published in Christianity and Literature, Winter 2007."--Title page verso.
"This chapbook was handset in Garamond type, printed on a hand fed C&P, then handbound. 950 copies printed on Mohawk Superfine paper. A special edition of 100 copies was printed on Zerkall Book paper and includes a portfolio of the engravings printed on Gampi Torinoko paper, hand printed on a Vandercook. The wood engravings were cut by Wesley Bates and printed from the wood. Design, composition, printing and binding by Leslie Shane, Carolyn Whitesel and Gray Zeitz at Larkspur Press."--Colophon.

Wendell Berry's most formal poetic work to date is a sequence of traditional and classic meditations, spanning the years 1979 to 1985. Written in the solitude of his hillside study over seven years of Sabbaths, these are poems of deep spirituality, meshing the metaphysical and the natural worlds.

"Poem II was originally published in Orion"--Title page verso.
"This chapbook was handset in Garamond type and printed on a hand-fed C&P. 1400 copies were printed on Mohawk Superfine paper and handbound at Larkspur Press. 100 copies were printed on Magnani Velata paper and handbound by Carolyn Whitesel. The wood engravings were cut by Wesley Bates. Design, composition and presswork by Deborah Kessler, Leslie Shane, Jean Somerville and Gray Zeitz at Larkspur Press."--Colophon.
Kentucky author.

Article from the Sewanee Review, v.119:n.2(2011): 198-205

45 pages

The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry gathers one hundred poems written between 1957 and 1996. Chosen by the author, these pieces have been selected from each of nine previously published collections. The rich work in this volume reflects the development of Berry's poetic sensibility over four decades. Focusing on themes that have occupied his work for years--land and nature, family and community, tradition as the groundwork for life and culture--The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry celebrates the broad range of this vital and transforming poet.

Tom Pohrt spent years gathering those poems of Wendell Berry's he imagined children might read and appreciate, making sketches to accompany his selection. Over the past several years a dialogue has evolved in which the poet has come to advise the illustrator on the natural history of the animals and plants seen so intimately in the poems. Then came the august book designer Dave Bullen, who has been designing the books of Wendell Berry for more than thirty years. The resulting volume of 21 poems includes dozens of the sketches, drawings and watercolors in what amounts to a visual meditation on the poem they work to illustrate and is simply staggering in both its beauty and its meaning to those of us who remain lovers of the book as physical object. In the full-color Terrapin we have not only a volume of staggering beauty but a consummate example of the collaborative effort that is fine bookmaking, the perfect gift for children, grandchildren or anyone who remains a lover of the book as physical object.

Wendell Berry's Sabbath Poems are filled with spiritual longing and political extremity, memorials and celebrations, elegies and lyrics, alongside the occasional rants of the Mad Farmer, pushed to the edge yet again by his compatriots and elected officials. With the publication of this new complete edition, it has become increasingly clear that the Sabbath Poems have become the very heart of Berry's work. And these magnificent poems, taken as a whole for the first time in This Day, have become one of the greatest contributions ever made to American poetry.

Berry's Sabbath Poems embrace much that is elemental to human life--beauty, death, peace, and hope. In his preface, Berry writes about the growing audience for public poetry readings. While he sees poetry in the public eye as a good thing, Berry asks us to recognize the private life of the poem. These Sabbath Poems were written "in silence, in solitude, and mainly out of doors," and tell us about "moments when heart and mind are open and aware." Wendell Berry is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of the truths revealed.

The fifteen poems and one essay included here, personally selected by Wendell Berry from among his previously published work, quietly and joyously celebrate the enduring satisfactions of good work and a happy home. Traveling at Home opens with "A Walk Down Camp Branch," an essay in which the author reveals his special sensitivity to nature and his rural Kentucky community. Next are poems from 1957 to 1982 in which Berry establishes his enduring themes--the contemplation of the individual's place within community and the interdependence of all things. In conclusion is a group of the Sabbath poems in which the poet speaks with reverence and humility of the pains and joys of relationships with the land, with family, and with passing generations. Originally published as a limited edition in 1988,Traveling at Home pairs Mr. Berry's eloquent writings with John DePol's exquisite woodcuts. It is one of the most beautiful presentations of this well-loved writer's work.

57 pages.

Composed while Wendell Berry looked out the multipaned window of his writing studio, this early sequence of poems contemplates Berry's personal life as much as it ponders the seasons he witnessed through the window. First designed and printed on a Washington hand press by Bob Barris at the Press on Scroll Road,Window Poems includes elegant wood engravings by Wesley Bates that complement the reflective and meditative beauty of Berry's poems.

With an introduction by Wade Hall, Morris Grubbs has sifted through vintage classics, little-known gems, and stunning debuts to assemble this collection of forty stories by popular and critically acclaimed writers. In subtle and profound ways they challenge and overturn accepted stereotypes about the land their authors call home, whether by birth or by choice. Kentucky writers have produced some of the finest short stories published in the last fifty years, much of which focuses on the tension between the comforts of community and the siren-like lure of the outside world. Arranged chronologically, from Robert Penn Warren's "Blackberry Winter" to Crystal E. Wilkinson's "Humming Back Yesterday," these stories are linked by their juxtaposition of departures and returns, the familiar and the unknown, home and beyond. Contributors: Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, James Still, Jane Mayhall, Elizabeth Hardwick, Dean Cadle, Jesse Stuart, Billy C. Clark, Janice Holt Giles, A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Hollis Summers, Ed McClanahan, Sallie Bingham, Robert Hazel, Jack Cady, Jim Wayne Miller, David Madden, Gayl Jones, Jane Stuart, Gurney Norman, Walter Tevis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Joe Ashby Porter, Leon V. Driskell, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Richard Cortez Day, Sena Jeter Naslund, Pat Carr, Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, Lisa Koger, Barbara Kingsolver, Normandi Ellis, Guy Davenport, Kim Edwards, Chris Holbrook, Paul Griner, Chris Offutt, Dwight Allen, Crystal E. Wilkinson. Edited by Morris Allen Grubbs; with an introduction by Wade Hall and an afterword by Charles E. May.

DVD video, 89 minutes. Produced and directed by Guy Mendes ; original music composed & performed by Jay Bolotin ; fiddle & mandolin, Paul Patterson. Participants: Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, Gurney Norman, Ed McClanahan, James Baker Hall. "Meet writers and creative artists in all disciplines, whose stories will fascinate you and whose work will inspire you. Explore diverse culture and traditions. Enjoy the best music, dance, and theatrical performances that Kentucky, the nation, and the world have to offer."--Container.

DVD video; approx. 111 minutes. Presents keynote dialog between Frank X. Walker and Gurney Norman about Appalachian literature and authors. Presents readings by three Kentucky authors. Master of Ceremonies, program luncheon, Robert Wallace; Gail Wells, welcome; keynote speakers: Frank X. Walker, Gurney Norman; welcome to readings, James Votruba; introdution of readers, Jonathan Cullick; readers, Gurney Norman, Crystal Wilkinson, Wendell Berry.

Archival material. Housed at the Kentucky Historical Society.
Collection consists of 41 boxes of letters, drafts of his publications; copies of interviews conducted by James Baker Hall with other writers; draft copies of manuscripts from other authors; drafts of unpublished James Baker Hall stories, poems, and two novels; journals and notebooks; and memorabilia (clippings, magazines, etc.) related to the literary career of James Baker Hall. Included are letters from Hall's literary friends and colleagues such as Wendell Berry, Robert Hazel, Ed McClanahan, Bobbie Ann Mason, Gurney Norman, and Barry Spacks, as well as other artists.

Named persons: Gurney Norman; Bobbie Ann Mason; Ed McClanahan; Wendell Berry; Mary Ann Taylor-Hall. 240 pages; portraits.

DVD video; approx. 82 minutes. "In 1965, Wendell Berry returned home to Henry County, where he bought a small farm house and began a life of farming, writing and teaching. This lifelong relationship with the land and community would come to form the core of his prolific writings. A half century later Henry County, like many rural communities across America, has become a place of quiet ideological struggle. In the span of a generation, the agrarian virtues of simplicity, land stewardship, sustainable farming, local economies and rootedness to place have been replaced by a capital-intensive model of industrial agriculture characterized by machine labor, chemical fertilizers, soil erosion and debt--all of which have frayed the fabric of rural communities. Writing from a long wooden desk beneath a forty-paned window, Berry has watched this struggle unfold, becoming one of its most passionate and eloquent voices in defense of agrarian life. Filmed across four seasons in the farming cycle, Look & see blends observational scenes of farming life, interviews with farmers and community members with evocative, carefully framed shots of the surrounding landscape. Thus, in the spirit of Berry's agrarian philosophy, Henry County itself will emerge as a character in the film--a place and a landscape that is deeply interdependent with the people that inhabit it"--Two Birds Film WWW site. Featuring Wendell Berry, Tanya Berry, Mary Berry, and Steve Smith.