Conversations with Wendell Berry

"Whether we know it or not, whether we want to be or not, we are members of one another." Since 1960, Wendell Berry (b. 1934) has produced one of the most substantial and consistently thematic bodies of work of any modern American writer. In more than fifty books in various genres-novels, short stories, poems, and essays-he has celebrated a life lived in close communion with neighbors and the earth and has addressed many of our most urgent cultural maladies. His collections of essays urge us to think and act responsibly as members of a community-both human and natural. Volumes of his poems seek to wed us to nature and realign our vision with its mysteries. His growing Port William cycle of novels offers us a fictional model for understanding, for compassion, and for living in constant regard for others. Conversations with Wendell Berry gathers for the first time interviews with the writer, ranging from 1973 to 2006, including one never before published. For readers acquainted with Berry's work, this volume offers insights available nowhere else. It reveals succinctly the main currents of his life's work. What emerges is a citizen-writer profoundly affected by cultural crises at home and in the world. Morris Allen Grubbs directs the Preparing Future Faculty Program in the graduate school at University of Kentucky, where he was a student of Berry's. He is editor of Home and Beyond: An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories. Photograph-Wendell Berry by Pam Spaulding, courtesy CJF