Copious Notes

Henry County native Wendell Berry will deliver the 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities April 23 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. The annual lecture is considered the most prestigious honor the federal government gives for achievement in the humanities.

Wendell Berry.

Previous Jefferson lecturers include John Updike, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller and Robert Penn Warren.

In announcing the honor, National Endowment for the Humanities chair Jim Leach said,  “Wendell Berry is an American treasure whose prose and poetry have — with subtlety, intelligence, and conviction — helped open our eyes to the importance of respecting and living with nature. Tilling the land of his Kentucky forebears, he is a 21st-century Henry David Thoreau.”

Berry’s lecture, It All Turns on Affection, will be about the interaction of people and nature as is depicted in history, nature and philosophy.

Berry, the author more than 40 books of poems, essays, short stories and novels, lives on a 125-acre farm near Port Royal.

Tickets for the lecture are free and on a first come, first serve basis. Click here for the ticket application form.