Kentucky's literary scene just celebrated book festivals in Louisville and Lexington.

But last Saturday, a handful of Kentucky's top writers read to a sold out crowd in Newcastle, Kentucky.

What's the cultural significance of this small town in Henry County?

Well, it happens to be the home of Kentucky's literary living legend, Wendell Berry.

Our Dan Leffler takes us there for this week's Arts and Culture segment we call tapestry.

I founded the very center in 2011 to continue my family's advocacy for small farmers in their communities.

I knew from my father when I started the Berry Center that we didn't just have an agricultural problem, we had a cultural problem.

So that brings me really to the Kentucky Arts and Letters Day, when we bring together the finest writers, maybe anywhere.

But, a lot of fine writers live in Kentucky.

I'm reading to poems about real people.

So the first poem is about a woman who survived the 2022 floods in eastern Kentucky, and another one is about the first federally prosecuted hate crime in the nation, which happened in Kentucky when a young gay man was almost killed.

And, and so they they use the new hate crime to prosecute the people who did it.

My poetry collection is a lot about grief and not only personal grief, but sort of witnessing collective grief.

Our effort as writers has always been or long been, a way to honor, the communities where from not to, sugarcoat any of it at all.

But to to realize that people we've known all of our lives have lived with dignity and purpose.

My father lived from pillar to post.

Well, he had his.

And I've had mine.

His life was not a trumpet vine.

There was something in him that never bloomed.

Most of his life, he didn't have teeth and didn't know what to do with himself.

I don't know if ever he felt doomed or if he ever learned to feel.

Newcastle is the home of the Berry Center.

It is the, county seat of Henry County, Kentucky, where my family has lived.

For I'm the eighth generation to live in farm in Henry County.

My daughter Virginia, who started Kentucky Arts and Letters Day, is the ninth generation to live in Henry County.

It's here because this is home.

Newcastle is not necessarily like a destination place in Kentucky.

And it brings a lot of people to a small Kentucky town.

A town that is, you know, mostly been built around agriculture and rural life.

And of course, you know, sort of the center of the Wendell Berry world.

So a lot of people want to come here to see the place.

Wendell Berry is writing about all of us who come here to read.

You know, we have such deep respect for Wendell Berry that we just want to be in his orbit.

And, it's it's a real honor to be asked to to read here with him.

And the day sold out this year in 12 minutes.

I think that just I can't think of anything more hopeful, really, than that.

That there's so many people in this state that want to hear from these writers.

And big writers, they are.

This was the ninth annual Kentucky Arts and Letters Day Festival.

Wendell Berry writes poetry, novels and nonfiction, and 2012 he received the National Humanities Medal, and a few years later, he was the first living author inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

A living legend, indeed.