The CiRCE Institute is proud to announce that Wendell Berry, acclaimed novelist, essayist, poet, and teacher, will receive the 2012 Russell Kirk Paideia Prize at the CiRCE conference on July 20, 2012, in Louisville, KY. Annually since 2002, the CiRCE Institute has presented The Paideia Prize to a teacher who has devoted his life to cultivating wisdom and virtue in his students.Mr. Berry, a native of Kentucky, will be honored at the Paideia Prize-giving banquet, a highlight of the CiRCE conference: A Contemplation of Creation, held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on July 18-21.Come celebrate Mr. Berry’s life and work with us as we commemorate his dedication to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. In his writings and in his teaching, both at the University level and at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Mr. Berry’s work is nourished by his recognition that education done right is education done in community and that justice establishes a harmony that sustains community, soul, body, and earth.

To reserve a seat or to learn more about the CiRCE conference please click here.

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WENDELL BERRY was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1934. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky in 1956 and continued on to complete a master’s degree in 1957. In 1958, he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
Berry has taught at Stanford University, Georgetown College, New York University, the University of Cincinnati, and Bucknell University. He taught at his alma mater, the University of Kentucky from 1964-77, and again from 1987-93.

The author of more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, Wendell Berry has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1962), the Vachel Lindsay Prize from Poetry (1962), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1965), a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing (1971), the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly Review (1974), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award (1987), a Lannan Foundation Award for Non-Fiction (1989), Membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers (1991), the Ingersoll Foundation’s T. S. Eliot Award (1994), the John Hay Award (1997), the Lyndhurst Prize (1997), and the Aitken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review (1998). His books include the novel Hannah Coulter (2004), the essay collections Citizenship Papers (2005) and The Way of Ignorance (2006), and Given: Poems (2005), all available from Counterpoint. Berry’s latest works include The Mad Farmer Poems (2008) and Whitefoot (2009), which features illustrations by Davis Te Selle.

He lives and works with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Port Royal, Kentucky.

 

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To learn more about Mr. Berry, click here and here.

*Bio from Counterpoint Publishers

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