Rooted Words

Writers on the Land
Morning view from Barbara Kingsolver’s front porch.

What is the role of community in the lives of writers who may be isolated, due to our rural locations, from other artists? How do we balance the pursuit of creative freedom with a concern for sustainability and land stewardship? What does the word “agrarian” mean, and how has agrarian literature shaped American history? How has the racist history of people of color being brutally dispossessed of their land, and sexist traditions that require rigid adherence to oppressive gender roles, shaped our voices?

These are some of the questions that animated and guided this work: a collection of oral histories and paintings exploring the relationship between language and land in the lives and work of a group of writers. Some were raised on farms and have since moved to city or town; some have done the opposite.

The paintings were auctioned in 2022. 100% of the proceeds were donated to two organizations: the bell hooks Memorial Writing Contest in hooks’ hometown of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky.

To listen to the unedited oral history interviews, visit the Kentucky Writers on the Land Oral History Project, archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky.

 

Adams at home

Dobree Adams

Greene standing downhill from his writing hut.

Jonathan Greene

Adams in the backyard of his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Noah Adams

Berry conversing with visitors at his home in Henry County, Kentucky.

Wendell Berry

Finney looking at a Sarah Hoskins photograph of a hog killing.

Nikky Finney

Leatha Kendrick holding a photograph of her farmstead in East Point, Kentucky.

Leatha Kendrick

Kingsolver with a member of her herd of Icelandic sheep.

Barbara Kingsolver

Inside Manning's barn, on his 20-acre farm in Washington County, Kentucky.

Maurice Manning

Mason at her Anderson County, Kentucky home.

Bobbie Ann Mason

Buckeyes leafing out in April near Erik Reece’s Woodford County, Kentucky home.

Erik Reece

Schimmoeller in his garden.

Mark Schimmoeller

Taylor in the writing shed of his Franklin County home.

Richard Taylor

Taylor-Hall sits in her solid home, holding a photo of the tarpaper shack it once was.

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

Wilkinson holding a photograph of her grandparents, Silas and Christine Wilkinson, who owned the farm in Casey County, Kentucky, where Crystal was raised.

Crystal Wilkinson

Zeitz standing in front of his July corn patch.

Gray Zeitz