Wendell Berry has been an Orion contributor and advisor since the magazine’s beginnings in 1982. Berry is the author of over forty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and has farmed in Port Royal, Kentucky, for over forty years.

This week we celebrate Wendell Berry’s eighty-sixth birthday by sharing several of our staff’s all-time favorite essays, poems, short stories, and media clips published in Orion over the past four decades.  

		Best Political Writing: “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear” Summer 2005 This essay was written in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, part of a three-essay book of the same title.
		Best Food and Farm Writing: “The Agrarian Standard” Summer 2002 Twenty-five years after the publication of his landmark book, The Unsettling of America, the author reflects on the state of agricultural life in America.
		Best Poem: “The Defenders” July/August 2009
		Best Interview: “To Live and Love with a Dying World” Spring 2020 A conversation with climate activist Tim DeChristopher.
		Best Fiction: “Whitefoot” January 2007 A story from the center of the world.
		Best Video: Fire & Grit Plenary Talk (26 minutes) Summer 1999   Berry delivered this talk in June 1999 during an Orion conference, Fire & Grit, which took place in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.