Trivia

Earned his bachelor and master's degrees in English from the University of Kentucky.

Protested the Vietnam War, saying in 1968 that "peace is more important than victory,".

Arrested in 1979 for trespassing as he protested the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant in Madison, Indiana.

Came from a long line of tobacco producers. John M. Berry, his father, co-founded the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-Op in the 1920s, which stabilized the price of tobacco and helped farmers who would have been subject to the pricing impulses of the monopoly American Tobacco Company.

Prolific writer of nonfiction, poetry and fiction from Henry County, Kentucky.

He attended the University of Kentucky and Stanford, and was an English professor at New York University.

Was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

From 2014 to his death he was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

On 28 January 28 2015 he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012.

Recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.[.