Essays on Wendell Berry

Book-Length Studies, Collections, and Print Essays
Angyal, Andrew. Wendell Berry. New York: Twayne, 1995.

Baker, Jack R. and Jeffrey Bilbro. Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place. Lexington, KY: U P of Kentucky, 2017.

Bilbro, Jeffrey. Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms. Lexington, KY: U P of Kentucky, 2020.

Bilbro, Jeffrey. "The Way of Love: Berry's Vision of Work in the Kingdom of God," in Loving God's Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2015. 138-178.

Bonzo, J. Matthew and Michael R. Stevens. Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008.

Collier, Winn. "Holy Ground: Considering a Sacramental Ecclesiology in Berry's Port William," in Rooted and Grounded: Essays on Land and Christian Discipleship. Edited by Ryan D. Harker and Janeen Bertsche Johnson. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2016. 155-163.

Goodrich, Janet. The Unforeseen Self in the Works of Wendell Berry. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2001.

Klinedinst, Richard J. "Cultivating Right Desire: Wendell Berry's Economic Vision," in Rooted and Grounded: Essays on Land and Christian Discipleship. Edited by Ryan D. Harker and Janeen Bertsche Johnson. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2016. 164-176.

Merchant, Paul, ed. Wendell Berry (American Authors Series). Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence, 1991.

Mitchell, Mark and Nathan Schlueter. The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011.

Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 2011.

Peters, Jason, ed. Wendell Berry: Life and Work. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 2007.

Shuman, Joel James and L. Roger Owens, eds. Wendell Berry and Religion: Heaven's Earthly Life. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 2009.

Smith, Kimberly K. Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace. Lawrence: U P of Kansas, 2003.

Sutterfield, Ragan. Wendell Berry and the Given Life. Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2017.

Weibe, Joseph R. The Place of Imagination: Wendell Berry and the Poetics of Community, Affection, and Identity. Waco, TX: Baylor U P, 2017.

Internet Resources

"The Abolition of Troy Chatham" by Jake Meador (Mere Orthodoxy, 3 January 2017) 

"Agrarians of the World, Unite!" (Christianity Today, 10 June 1992)

"A Jeremiah for Everyone" by John J. Miller (National Review, 28 July 2012)

"A Kinship of the Fields: Farming in the Poetry of R. S. Thomas and Wendell Berry" (Jeffery Triggs)

"A Polite Disagreement with Jayber Crow and the Mad Farmer" (Tamara Hill Murphy, Art House Blog, July 2015)

"A Proposal to Heal the Rift between Wendell Berry and Christianity" by Walt Garlington (Confiteri, 13 June 2017)

"A Shared Place: Wendell Berry's Lifelong Dissent" by Jedediah Britton-Purdy (The Nation, 9 September 2019)

"A Visible Mark Upon the Earth: Why Wendell Berry" by Tony Klemmer (Aspen Institute, 18 May 2020)

"A Way of Life Being Lost" by Ruth Conniff (The Progressive, 11 July 2022)

"Allen Tate, Wendell Berry, and Sewanee’s Discarded ‘The Hidden Wound" by Alan Cornett (The Imaginative Conservative, 9 October 2013)

"At 70, Wendell Berry remains a champion of agrarian ideals"  by Mark Engler (Grist Magazine)

"Back to the Land: Wendell Berry in the Path of Modernity" by George Scialabba (The Baffler, 20 January 2020)

"Baldwin, Buckley, and Berry on Racism and the World Order" by Mark Clavier (Front Porch Republic, 24 July 2020)

"Becoming Rememberers: How Wendell Berry Helps Us Grieve Our Time’s Tragic Tradeoffs" by Peggy Haslar (Sparrowfare, 5 July 2018)

"Berry on IP" by Dennis Crouch (Patently-O, 29 March 2017)

"Berry, hooks, and the Courage to Live Small" by Rusty Woods (Fathom, 27 January 2020)

"Butz’s Law of Economics" by Noah Wurtz (Agrarian Trust, 23 January 2023)

"Christianity and Place" by Alan Jacobs (The American Conservative, 29 May 2013)

Compendium of Wendell Berry posts at the blog "Pax on Both Houses"

"The Danger of Hope: Lana Del Rey, Stephen King, and Wendell Berry in the Days of Covid-19" by Richard A. Bailey (Front Porch Republic, 12 June 2020)

"Does Wendell Berry Have Rose-Colored Glasses?" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Front Porch Republic, 31 December 2016)

"Ecology of Mind" (a 1979 paper by Jon Towne)

“Economics and Education for Human Flourishing: Wendell Berry and the Oikonomic Alternative to Neoliberalism,” by Joseph A. Henderson and David W. Hursch published in Educational Studies Vol. 50 (2014), 167-186.

"The Educational Philosophy of Wendell Berry" by Paul Theobald and Dale T. Snauwaert (ERIC, pdf)

"Escape from Violence: Synthesizing the ethics of Rene Girard, Wendell Berry, & Jacques Derrida" by Daniel Silliman

"Eternal Beings Living in Time: On Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow" by John Pattison

"The Eye of the Beholder" (Edward O. Wilson and Wendell Berry) by Chet Raymo (Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2002)

"Faith, Fiction, and Christian Nationalism" by Russell Moore (Plough, 24 June 2022)

"Farm as Form: Wendell Berry's Sabbaths" (Jeffery Triggs)

"Farmer, activist, economist, seer: why Wendell Berry is the modern-day Thoreau" (Andrew Marr, The New Statesman, 28 January 2017)

"Fictional Communities" by Nancy M. Tischler (World Magazine)

"Fidelity" - an overview from a medical perspective

"Finding My Place by Finding Wendell Berry" by Jane M. Schreck (Issuu from On Second Thought Magazine, 2020)

"5 Reasons to Read Wendell Berry Today" by Craig G. Bartholomew (The Big Picture Online Magazine, July 2022)

"Form, Faith, and Freedom: Wendell Berry on What Poetry Teaches Us about the Secret to a Happy Marriage" by Maria Popova (The Marginalian)

"From a Lookout in the Woods" by Jonah Lynch (L'Osservatore Romano, 30 April 2021)

Front Porch Republic articles on Wendell Berry

"Gardening, Wendy’s, and Wendell Berry" by Nathaniel Marshall (The Blue Scholar, 29 April 2023)

"Getting Acquainted with Wendell Berry" by Heath Racela (Quarantine Creatives Newsletter, 11 September 2022)

Glynn Young blog posts on Wendell Berry at Faith, Fiction, Friends

"Good Riddance to the Robert E. Lee Statue" by Russell Moore (Christianity Today, 9 September 2021)

"Good Work: Learning about Ministry from Wendell Berry" by Kyle Childress (Christian Century)

"Hannah Coulter, the Green Lady, and Me" by Emily G. Wenneborg (Plough, 11 April 2023)

"The Hole in the Side of the Cow" by Kenneth Asher (Walking with Wendell, 7 July 2019)

"The Hole in Wendell Berry's Gospel: Why the Agrarian Dream Is Not Enough" by Tamara Hill Murphy (Plough Magazine, Winter 2017)

"Imagining a Different Way to Live" by Ragan Sutterfield (Christianity Today, 2006)

“Inculcating Peaceability: ‘Let us make what peace is left for us to make’” by Jane Schreck (In Factis Pax, Volume 9 Number 2, 2015)

"The Irony of a Wendell Berry NFT" by Andrew Figueiredo (Front Porch Republic, 11 February 2022)

Ken Kesey on Wendell Berry (The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, 1971)

"Know Thyself: Community, Mind, & Place" by Sam Phelps (The Dickinsonian, 5 April 2018)

"Labours of Love" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Comment Magazine, 20 May 2021)

"Land, Community, Justice: The Gospel According to Wendell Berry" by Wen Stephenson (The Nation, 4.6.15)

"Larry McMurtry and Wendell Berry at the Dairy Queen" by Seth Wieck (Front Porch Republic, 7 April 2021

Lectures by Dreher, Kauffman, Fahey, Carlson and WB himself from November 2007 Wendell Berry Conference in Louisville (audio, mp3 files).

"Light in Darkness: Wendell Berry" by Jim Powell (Threepenny Review, Fall, 2011)

Living by Words: Berry and others on PBS: KET

"Living on Earth Profile Series #8: Wendell Berry" (NPR, 6.16.95)

"The Loneliness of Wendell Berry" by Michael Warren Davis (12 December 2022, The American Conservative; membership required)

"Look and See; Listen and Hear: Wendell Berry and the Contradictions of our Climate" by Erik Lindberg (Resilience, 23 July 2018)

"Love Is its Own Justification: Wendell Berry and the Lure of Political Efficacy" by Jeffery Bilbro (Front Porch Republic, 21 January 2020)

"Loving Care" by Brennan Dignan (Human Restoration Project, 23 January 2020)

"Lyrical Plea to Preserve Fabric of Small Farms" (New York Times, 2.27.88)

"Magazine’s ‘short, selective biography’ of Berry has lines from forthcoming book, which will ‘offend most everyone’" (The Rural Blog, 22 February 2022)

"Media-Friendly Sins of Other People" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Plough, 10 November 2022)

"Megan Kimble on Wendell Berry and Why I'm Not Going to Buy a Smartphone" (Essay Daily, 2.25.13) 

"Membership & Memory: A Review of Fidelity by Wendell Berry" by Bruce Bawer (The New Criterion, November 1992)

"More Real than Real: The Weird Localism of Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Wendell Berry" by Bryan Wallis, Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (AJE), Vol 2 (2012)

"Movie Un-Review: Wendell Berry, the Not-Quite-Rock Star Seer" by Allan S. Christensen (From Filmers to Farmers, 20 January 2017)

"Moving the Dark to Wholeness: The Elegies of Wendell Berry" (Jeffery Triggs)

"On Stickers and Boomers" by Alan Jacobs (The American Conservative, 29 May 2103)

"On the Road with Wendell Berry" by Jon M. Sweeney (America Magazine, 18 October 2019)

"One World, One People: Ruminating on Wendell Berry" by Odin Halvorson (Medium, 25 July 2018)

"Outdoors: A Farmer's Food for Thought" on What Are People For? by Nelson Bryant at New York Times

"Patiently Learning to Belong" by Jeffrey Bilbro (The University Bookman, 4 February 2018)

"Place Isn't Just Geographical" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Front Porch Republic, May 30, 2013)

"The Pope and the Plowman: The Rhetorical Rendezvous of Francis and Wendell Berry" by John Murdock (First Things, 2 July 2015)

"Practicing Authentic Conversation" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Front Porch Republic, 4 October 2022)

"Race & Anti-fragility: Wendell Berry’s ‘The Hidden Wound’ at Fifty" by Joshua P. Hochschild (Commonweal, 5 August 2020)

"Reading Wendell Berry in the National Parks" (National Parks Traveler, 31 July 2016)

"Re-Membering Home: Wendell Berry's Response to the Gnostic Abstraction of Place" by Sarah Lunsford. College Honors Thesis. Baylor University, May 2018. (pdf)

"Remembering Revisited" by Joseph Wiebe (Front Porch Republic, 4 November 2022)

"Responsible Writers" by Jon M. Sweeney. (America Magazine, June 22-29, 2015)

"Rethinking Politics as Statecraft: Wendell Berry among the Anabaptists" by Richard J. Klinedinst (pdf) (The Mennonite Quarterly Review, October 2009)

"Riding with Wendell" by Lenny Wells at Thoughts from the Orchard (9 June 2022)

"The Rooted Faith in Wendell Berry's Fiction" (Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, The Gospel Coalition, 13 March 2018)

"Rural Philosophy for Education: Wendell Berry's Tradition" (ERIC Digest)

"Seed Will Sprout in the Scar: Wendell Berry on Higher Education" (Matt Bonzo & Michael Stevens, 13 August 2008)

"Sexuality Studies for Foodies" by Gabriel Rosenberg (The Paw of Reason, 12 March 2021)

"Standing by Words: Wendell Berry's 'Interesting Prose Side'" (Jeffery Triggs)

"Stop Talking about Wendell Berry on Twitter" by Matt Stewart (Front Porch Republic. 14 May 2018)  

"Suffering Unto Salvation in Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow" by Martha Greene Eads (The Cresset, Michaelmas 2011)

"Technology and Human Renewal in Wendell Berry's Port William" by Eric Miller (The Cresset, Michaelmas 2013)

"The Seer: Laura Dunn's Vision of a Poet Prophet" by Ragan Sutterfield (Heifer International, 16 September 2016)

"Three Ways Christians Can Learn from Wendell Berry" by Joel Pinckney (ERLC, 17 July 2015)

"Three Words to Break a Nation: Revisiting Wendell Berry’s 'Hidden Wound'” by Kirk Swearingen (Medium, 26 September 2021)

“The Ultimate Protestant: Wendell Berry, Same-Sex Marriage, and the New State Religion” by Jerry Salyer (The Catholic World Report, 19 August 2014)

"Ties that Bind: Wendell Berry, the Bible, and Port William" by Jonathon Van Maren (The European Conservative, 2 February 2023)

"Toward an Equitable Agrarian Commonwealth: Race and the Agrarian Tradition in the Works of Wendell Berry, Allen Tate, and Jean Toomer" by Eric D. Earnhardt, June 2011 (Master's Thesis for the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University)

Walter Moss on Wendell Berry

"We Approach Our World Like a Machine" by John Pattison (Strong Towns, 16 June 2020)

"Wendell Berry" by Silas House, excerpted from Step into the Circle: Writers in Modern Appalachia, edited by Amy Greene and Trent Thomson (South Writ Large, Spring 2020)

"Wendell Berry: a yeoman farmer and voice for rural America" by Anna Keating (America, 1 September 2017)

"Wendell Berry Against Your GPS" by Marc Barnes (Medium, 25 July 2017)

"Wendell Berry, Beauty, and the Future of Conservatism" by Samuel Samson (The Texas Horn, 3 June 2021)

"Wendell Berry and a City Pastor" by David Kamphuis (The Fire Escape, 13 May 2021)

"Wendell Berry and The Great Economy" by John Médaille (Front Porch Republic, 5 August 2010)

"Wendell Berry and Higher Education with Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro" (Forma podcast interview with David Kern, The Circe Institute)

"Wendell Berry and the Revitalized Pastor" by Paul House (The Gospel Coalition, 11 August 2016)

"Wendell Berry and Zoom" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Front Porch Republic, 5 May 2020)

"Wendell Berry Defends Rural America Against an Attack by New York Review of Books Writer" by John Collins (In These Times, 10 May 2017)

“Wendell Berry, el hombre de la Laudato Si: una experiencia de vida que nos abre los ojos y el corazón a la Vida.” by Ildefonso Fernández-Fígares Vicioso (Ciudad de Dios y de los Hombres, 28 January 2021)

"Wendell Berry in California" by Matthew D. Stewart (BOOM  California, 31 August 2017)

"Wendell Berry in modern times" by Geoff Wells

"Wendell Berry is a Dandelion Man: A Review of Look & See" by Brett McCracken (The Other Journal, 31 August 2017)

"Wendell Berry is still ahead of us" by Hope Reese (Vox, 9 October 2019)

"Wendell Berry Loves Your Nowhere Place" by David Kern (Christ & Pop Culture, 2 August 2016)

"Wendell Berry Opts Out Of The ‘Culture Of Violence’" by Jeffrey Bilbro (Front Porch Republic, 6 April 2015)

"Wendell Berry: paysan, poète et penseur de l’écologie” by Frédéric Dufoing (L'Inactuelle, 7 October 2019)

Wendell Berry: People, Land and Fidelity (M. A. Grubbs)

"Wendell Berry, Political Philosophy, & the Catholic Intellectual Tradition" by Prof. Joshua Hochschild (24 October 2019, audio at Soundcloud)

"Wendell Berry Puts Us All on Blast" by Austin Bailey (Heifer International, 2 October 2018)

"Wendell Berry, Temple Grandin, and the Idolatry of Abstractions" by Shmuel Klatzkin (The American Spectator, 7 January 2023)

"Wendell Berry: the cranky farmer, poet and essayist you just can’t ignore" by James T. Keane (America, 7 December 2021)

"Wendell Berry: The Mad Farmer and Wilderness" by David E. Gamble (Kentucky Review, Summer 1988) pdf

"Wendell Berry to the Rescue: Reading Poetry in an Age of Angry Rhetoric" by Derek Vreeland (Missio Alliance)

"Wendell Berry Wants to Shoot a Drone" by Josh Retterer (Mockingbird, 29 October 2020)

"Wendell Berry Wants Us to Get Small and Stay In" by Christine Grillo (Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, December 8, 2016)

"Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age" by Dorothy Wickenden (The New Yorker, 21 February 2022)

"Wendell Berry's Commencement Speeches" (Moby Lives, 15 May 2014)

"Wendell Berry’s Elegy For John F. Kennedy: 'November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three.'” (Buckeye Muse, 22 November 2014)

"Wendell Berry's Genealogy of Place" by John-Paul Heil (Genealogies of Modernity, 28 May 2021)

"Wendell Berry's High Horse" by Verlyn Klinkenborg (New York Review of Books, 8 October 2020)

"Wendell Berry's Pipe Dreams" (Terrierman's Daily Dose, 21 July 2009)

"Wendell Berry's 'Risk': In the Middle in Gay Marriage?" by Jacob Shatzer (Themelios, August 2017)

"Wendell Berry’s 'Think Little' Remains Relevant Today" by John Thomas (The New Utopian, 10 January 2022)

 "Wendell Berry's Wild Spirit" by Erik Reece (Garden & Gun, August/September 2011)

"Wendell Berry's Wisdom" by Michael Pollan (The Nation 9.2.09)

"Wendell Berry's Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic" by Gracy Olmstead (Breaking Ground, 4 June 2020)

"What I Learned from Reading Wendell Berry" by Scott Slayton (One Degree to Another, 26 October 2020)

"What Wendell Berry Can Show Zuckerberg Types About Making a Better World" by Gracy Olmstead (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 17 April 2018)

"What Wendell Berry Gets Wrong" by Rod Dreher (The American Conservative, 28 December 2016)

"What Wendell Berry Gets Wrong about Wendell Berry" by Matthew Loftus (Mere Orthodoxy, 2 January 2017)

"What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and 'Inevitability'” by Russell Arben Fox (Front Porch Republic, 9 April 2018)

"What Wendell Berry Taught Me" by Nick Offerman (Outside, 6 March 2023)

"When Losing is Likely: Wendell Berry's Conservative Radicalism" by Brad East (The Point Magazine, 18 June 2021)

"Why I hate Wendell Berry" by Allen T. Stanton (Faith & Leadership, 23 January 2018)

"Why I Wish I Didn’t Have a Smartphone and Computer (But Probably Won’t Give Them Up)" by Bill Lueders (Front Porch Republic, 12 December 2022)

"Why We Need Wendell Berry" by Jane Schreck (The Journal of Sustainability Education, 29 November 2015)

"The Woman Beside Wendell Berry" by Robert Jensen (Yes! Magazine, Winter 2017)

"The Work of a Catholic University in Local Culture" by John-Paul Heil (Dappled Things, 2002, Volume 17, Issue 3)

"Work and Prayer: The Brief Friendship of Thomas Merton and Wendell Berry" by Dan Rattelle (Front Porch Republic, 19 June 2020)

“Working with the Grammar of Creation: Benedict XVI, Wendell Berry, and the Unity of Catholic Moral Vision” by David Cloutier. Communio, Winter, 2010. pdf

links checked 1 March 2022