Beloved writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry has died at age 92
Renowned environmentalist, novelist, and poet Wendell Berry has passed away at age 92 in his home in Kentucky. Known for his lifelong commitment to sustainable farming and his critique of industrialized society, Berry was a celebrated literary figure and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
Why it matters
Berry's work profoundly influenced modern environmentalism and the movement toward local, sustainable living.
President Barack Obama presents the 2010 National Humanities Medal to Wendell E. Berry during a White House ceremony in 2011.
Novelist and poet Wendell Berry spent his life farming his land for food and for prose. It was land his family farmed and lived on for seven generations before him, in Henry County Kentucky.
He died at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky at age 92.
Berry started his career as a writer as an academic. He studied at the University of Kentucky, then Stanford, and had taken a prestigious position as an English professor at New York University by the time he was 28. But city life was never for him.
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