Jeffrey Bilbro is an Associate Professor of English at Grove City College. He grew up in the mountainous state of Washington and earned his B.A. in Writing and Literature from George Fox University in Oregon and his Ph.D. in English from Baylor University. His books include Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (written with Jack Baker), and Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms.
Jeffrey Bilbro
Articles by Jeffrey Bilbro
Wildcat, Microdramas, and Literacy
John Byron Kuhner describes how seven years living alone brought a slow, strange healing.
Anger, Isolation, and McCarthy
Jeff Reimer’s account of life in Newton, KS, which I had the privilege of visiting this summer, opens with some advice about what to do if you encounter a train…
Their Land
Will the new owners love that land as much as my parents? I hope so. But I know they won’t love it more.
Does Wisdom Belong to the Aged? Samuel Moyn’s Gerontocracy in America.
The rhetorical method of the book is, above all, snark.
Enclosure, AC, and Virtue
Joe Knight looks to an English folk hero who fought against enclosures to imagine how we might resist digital enclosures today.
Thoughts on Wendell Berry (Autobiographical and Otherwise)
For a man whose intellectual and artistic and personal focus was so concentrated, Wendell Berry’s writings contained multitudes.
Wendell Berry and the Choice of Life
It would be hard to imagine the existence of Front Porch Republic without Wendell Berry. FPR is a project that does not compute.
Remembering Wendell Berry
Patrick Deneen writes about how reading Berry led him to join with some others to found Front Porch Republic and to look for a job outside the Washington, DC area.
A Voice for my Generation
Rare is the writer who changes a person’s mind; Berry is the kind of writer who changes what one pays attention to.
The Real Ideal
Wendell is that American thinker who, for me, represents the true wisdom of a sacred and infuriating intersection: the crossroads where Real and Ideal meet.
Wendell Berry (1934-2026)
"To the faithful," John Milton writes, "Death [is] the Gate of Life." Yesterday our friend Wendell Berry walked through this gate.
The Most Interesting People You’ve Never Heard Of
Upstaters is not a book for upstate New Yorkers only.
The Death of Whimsy
Let whimsy back into your life. When you do, you may find that joy comes along with it.
Zoos, Bookstores, and Stories
Nathan Beacom considers two different accounts of the role that virtue plays in public life.
Dickinson, Texas, and Petrarch
Michael Powell visits several cities where “harm reduction” has led to endemic drug use and many overdose deaths.
Data Centers, Orchards, and Bartleby
Molly Taft talks to Joe Allen and others in the roiling, grass-roots movement against data centers.
Picnics, Conspiracies, and Skills
Paul Pastor describes his beloved home state as the end of the West.
Homer, Hopkins, and Humans
Eric Adler praises Patrick Deneen’s new book on how Homer’s Odyssey reveals the character of America’s tensions.
Memento Vivere
If we cannot tell the difference between ourselves and machines, it may not be that the machines are “that good.” It may be that our lives are that bad.
Lettuce, Kansas, and Burial
Luke Allen describes what it’s like to live in northern Michigan, a place that’s increasingly oriented toward tourism.