Wendell E. Berry, noted poet, essayist, novelist, farmer, and conservationist, delivers the 41st Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, entitled “It All Turns on Affection,” from the Concert Hall of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on April 23rd, 2012. Mr. Berry is introduced by Jim Leach, Chairman of The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and preceded by a reading by novelist, short story writer, and fellow Kentuckian Bobbie Anne Mason of Berry’s poem “VI” from his collection Leavings.

The annual lecture, sponsored by NEH, is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Past Jefferson Lecturers include Drew Gilpin Faust, Jonathan Spence, John Updike, Harvey Mansfield, Tom Wolfe, Donald Kagan, Helen Vendler, David McCullough, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Arthur Miller, James McPherson, Caroline Walker Bynum, Bernard Bailyn, Toni Morrison, Vincent Scully, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bernard Knox, Walker Percy, Cleanth Brooks, Sydney Hook, Barbara Tuchman, Saul Bellow, John Hope Franklin, Robert Penn Warren, and Lionel Trilling.