Barbara Kingsolver (born
April 8,
1955) is an
American writer. She has written, or collaborated on, 13 books, most of which are
novels, but including some
poems,
short stories and
essays. Kingsolver established the
Bellwether Prize for "literature of
social change", named after the
bellwether.
Biography
Kingsolver was born in
Annapolis,
Maryland, spent some of her childhood in Africa where her father was a medical doctor, and grew up near
Carlisle, Kentucky.
Kingsolver attended
DePauw University in
Greencastle,
Indiana on a music scholarship, studying
classical piano. Eventually, however, she changed her major to biology.
In the late 1970s, Kingsolver lived in a number of places, including Greece, France, and
Tucson, Arizona, working variously as an archaeological digger, copy editor, housecleaner, biological researcher and translator. She earned a Master's degree in
ecology and
evolutionary biology at the
University of Arizona. She then took a job as a science writer for the university. The science writing led to some freelance feature writing and journalism. In 1986, she won an
Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing. Her first novel,
The Bean Trees, was published in 1988.
Her subsequent books were
Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (non-fiction); a short story collection,
Homeland and Other Stories (1989); the novels
Animal Dreams (1990),
Pigs in Heaven (1993),
The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and
Prodigal Summer (2000); a poetry collection,
Another America (1992); the essay collections
High Tide in Tucson (1995) and
Small Wonder: Essays (2002)
Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, prose poetry with the photographs of
Annie Griffiths Belt; and
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007), a description of
eating locally.
The Poisonwood Bible (1998) was a bestseller that won the
National Book Prize of South Africa, was shortlisted for the
Pulitzer Prize and
PEN/Faulkner Award, and was chosen as an
Oprah's Book Club selection. In 2000, Kingsolver was awarded the
National Humanities Medal by
U.S. President Bill Clinton.
In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her
alma mater, DePauw University. In 2008, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from
Duke University, where she delivered the commencement address, entitled "How to be Hopeful".
She is a member of the
Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band consisting of published writers, including
Amy Tan,
Matt Groening,
Dave Barry, and
Stephen King among others.
Barbara Kingsolver lives on a farm in Emory, Virginia with her husband Steven Hopp, their daughter Lily, and her daughter Camille from a previous marriage.
Literary themes
Community, economic injustice and cultural difference inform the themes of Kingsolver's work.
In
The Bean Trees, the main character acquires a child named Turtle and meets a family of
Guatemalan immigrants whose daughter was taken by the government in an effort to force them to speak out about their underground teaching circle. They were forced to escape torture and death in their home country, but are also forced to evade the authorities in the United States. The sequel to
The Bean Trees, her 1993 novel
Pigs in Heaven, examines the conflicts between individual and community rights, through a story about a Cherokee child adopted out of her tribe. In
Animal Dreams, the American sister of the main protagonist is kidnapped by
US-backed Contras while working to promote sustainable farming in
Nicaragua. In
The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver examined the role of the United States and other political powers in
colonial and
post-colonial Africa.
Kingsolver has said, "If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread."
Works
- Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983, 1989
- Homeland and Other Stories, 1989
- Small Wonder: Essays, 2002
- Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, 2002 (with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt)
