Wendell Berry film will show at Sundance

Film buffs and industry insiders attending the annual Sundance Film Festival in Utah will get a glimpse of Kentucky through the words and vision of one our most notable writers, Wendell Berry. “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry” will screen in the “Spotlight” section of the renowned film fest on Friday, Jan. 20.

“Look and See,” formerly known as “The Seer,” premiered last year at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, to much acclaim, but the time between the two festivals allowed the filmmakers to tweak the film and its title. Directed by Laura Dunn (“The Unforeseen“) and produced by big Hollywood names like Robert Redford, Terrence Malick and Nick Offerman, the film also includes many Kentuckians who worked to get it to the screen, including co-producers Gill Holland, Owsley Brown III and Elaine Musselman.

“Look and See” is a beautiful love letter from Kentucky to the world, alerting people to the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America. It’s not necessarily a documentary on Wendell Berry, it’s a documentary on his place in the world — his home, his family, his farm and his neighbors in Henry County — and the ongoing plight of farmers today.

To read the much longer article by Sara Havens at Insider Louisville, go HERE.

See the Park Record interview with director Laura Dunn HERE.

Wendell Berry at The Land Institute

On September 25, 2016, Wendell Berry delivered the Strachan Donnelley Lecture on Conservation and Restoration at the 2016 annual Prairie Festival hosted by The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.

Via The Land Institute

Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Mary Berry in Conversation

The 36th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures featured Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson in a conversation moderated by Mary Berry, Wendell's daughter and the founding Executive Director of The Berry Center. The conversation took place on Saturday, October 22nd, 2016 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, MA.

See also at Resilience.

On Wendell Berry's recent conversation

Wendell Berry’s response to the recent election? “I’m still on the losing side and that’s where I’ve taken up my residence … If Hillary Clinton had won, I would still be on the losing side. And I would just have to go to work.”

When the celebrated writer, farmer, and elder statesman of the local food movement sat down in front of a sold-out audience at Johns Hopkins University last week, the crowd seemed even more eager than usual to soak in Berry’s wisdom in this particularly fraught national moment.

The event was a public conversation between Berry and Eric Schlosser, investigative journalist and author of Fast Food Nation, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. And many in the audience—made up of people who care about the work the Center does to study the intersections between food systems, the environment, and human health—were likely feeling a great deal worried about the fate of the issues about which they care deeply.

Read the whole article by Brian Massey at Civil Eats.

Wendell Berry will deliver keynote at Writers' Workshop

The 40th annual Workshop will take place July 24-29, 2017.

The Appalachian Writers’ Workshop at Hindman Settlement School, which is Kentucky’s premier writers gathering, provides an opportunity for aspiring and accomplished writers to immerse themselves in a community of people who appreciate Appalachian literature and who hail from or write about the region. This creative community comes to the Settlement to learn and teach the craft of writing through structured workshops and exchange with other writers. Both published and unpublished writers are urged to attend.

Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer and renowned author, will deliver the Jim Wayne Miller/James Still Keynote Address following a Kentucky Proud “dinner on the grounds” prepared by James Beard Award Finalist Chef Ouita Michel.

Go to Hindman Settlement School for complete information.

Wendell Berry in Conversation December 7, 2016

On December 7 at Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Berry spoke with Eric Schlosser.

 See a summary article HERE.

Wendell Berry delivers 17th Annual Dodge Lecture

On December 8, 2016 Mr. Berry delivered a talk entitled "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age." The event was held at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and was sponsored by The Center for a Livable Future and the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. Introductions begin around 9:20. Mr. Berry begins at 17:50. Johns Hopkins Livestream

Berry Center Bookstore Announces Open House

The Bookstore at The Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky will celebrate its Annual Open House on Saturday, December 10 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Mr. Berry, Ed McClanahan, Gray Zeitz and many others will be present for readings and signings.

An exhibit of art by Harlan Hubbard will be featured along with a demonstration of woodblock printing by Bill Caddell.

Some special attention will be given this year to Larkspur Press, Mr. Zeitz's long-running letterpress venture which has published quite a few of Mr. Berry's writings.  The event hails the release of Gabrielle Fox's Larkspur Press: Forty Years of Making Letterpress Books in a Rural Kentucky Community, 1974–2014.

Wendell Berry to Speak in Baltimore on December 8, 2016

Wendell Berry will deliver the 17th Annual Edward & Nancy Dodge Lecture in Baltimore, MD on December  8, 2016. The lecture will be entitled "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age."

For more information, visit The Center for a Livable Future.

See HERE, as well.

Wendell Berry at Centre College

Renowned writer Wendell Berry visited Centre College Monday night to speak for a crowd of several hundred at the Norton Center. 

Berry, an 82-year-old farmer and environmental activist who has authored dozens of works over the course of more than five decades, read a pair of his works and fielded a handful of questions during the hour-long event. 

Berry read one story that examined the lives of family farmers who earn a kind of freedom caring for their small plots of land, even as industrialization consumes more and more of the world around them. 

Berry’s second piece was actually written prior to the first one, and focused on the frugal spending habits of the same rural farm families. It presented the idea that who people are cannot be represented by economic principles.

For more, go to The Advocate-Messenger.