The Mad Farmer’s Wife is a response to a life lived on a mountain cattle farm in Southwest Virginia and also to a poetic persona created by noted Kentucky poet and essayist Wendell Berry: the Mad Farmer. The Mad Farmer’s Wife tries to help us understand the complexity and challenge of living that life in today’s economy and the dark life and death struggles that are a routine part of farm living.
Rita Quillen is the author of the novel Hiding Ezra, and the poetry chapbook Something Solid to Anchor To. Her most recent full-length collection is Her Secret Dream. She lives and farms in Scott County, Virginia, USA.