Author Wendell Berry Featured at ‘Keeping the Land & People Together’ June 29 in St. Paul

CONTACT: Brian DeVore, LSP, 612-722-6377

5/29/07
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — Farmer/author Wendell Berry will be featured during "Keeping the Land and People Together" at the College of St. Catherine in Saint Paul Friday, June 29. This evening of readings and discussion, which is being held to launch the Land Stewardship Project’s (LSP) 25th Anniversary, will also include Minnesota authors Mary Rose O'Reilley and Joe Paddock. The event begins at 7 p.m. and will be hosted by LSP co-founder Ron Kroese. A reception and refreshments featuring local food will follow. Seating is limited. Tickets are $25 and must be purchased ahead of time by calling 651-653-0618 or e-mailing lspwbl@landstewardshipproject.org.

Wendell Berry is an essayist, novelist and poet who farms in Henry County, Ky. Berry’s “eloquent essays on honoring and working the land have been a vital force in the modern agrarian movement,” wrote New York Times reviewer Roy Hoffman in January. His landmark critique of industrial agriculture, the Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, is still as relevant and powerful today as when it was first published three decades ago. Berry is a regular contributor to Orion magazine. His latest book, Andy Catlett: Early Travels: A Novel, was published in 2006.

Mary Rose O'Reilley, a graduate of the College of St. Catherine and professor of English at the University of St. Thomas, is the author of The Love of Impermanent Things: A Threshold Economy and The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd, among other books. O’Reilley has received numerous honors for her work, including the Walt Whitman Award for her first book-length collection of poems, Half Wild. She has also been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards.

Joe Paddock is a poet, oral historian and environmental writer who lives with his wife Nancy, also a writer and poet, in Litchfield, Minn. He is the author of an acclaimed biography, Keeper of the Wild: The Life of Ernest Oberholtzer. He also co-authored with Nancy Paddock and Carol Bly Soil and Survival, an LSP publication. His latest book of poems, A Sort of Honey, was published earlier this year. Paddock has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards.

LSP (www.landstewardshipproject.org) was launched in 1982 in Saint Paul as a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the ethic and practice of stewardship on America’s farms. From its inception, LSP has advanced practical solutions to achieving stewardship while building widespread public support for an agricultural system in which family farms, small towns and a healthy environment could thrive. LSP’s membership base of farmers and non-farmers is also working to advance social justice for people who produce food and care for the land.

-30-