Barbara Kingsolver | |
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_(cropped).jpg) Kingsolver at the 2019National Book Festival | |
| Born | Barbara Ellen Kingsolver (1955-04-08)April 8, 1955 (age 70) Annapolis, Maryland, U.S. |
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| Period | 1988–present |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Subject | Social justice, feminism, environmentalism |
| Notable works | |
| Spouse |
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| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Wendell Roy Kingsolver (father), Virginia Lee (née Henry) Kingsolver (mother) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Barbara Ellen Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works includeThe Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, andAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded thePulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novelDemon Copperhead.[1][2] Her work often focuses on topics such associal justice,biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including theDayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011 and theNational Humanities Medal. After winning forThe Lacuna in 2010 andDemon Copperhead in 2023, Kingsolver became the first author to win theWomen's Prize for Fiction twice.[3][4] Since 1993, each one of her book titles have been on theNew York Times Best Seller list.[5]
Kingsolver was raised in ruralKentucky, lived briefly in theCongo in her early childhood, and she currently lives inAppalachia.[2] Kingsolver earned degrees in biology,ecology, andevolutionary biology atDePauw University and theUniversity of Arizona, and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. In 2000, the politicallyprogressive Kingsolver established theBellwether Prize to support "literature of social change".
Kingsolver was born in 1955 inAnnapolis, Maryland, the daughter of Wendell Roy Kingsolver and Virginia Lee (née Henry) Kingsolver, but grew up inCarlisle, Kentucky.[6][7] When Kingsolver was seven, her father, a physician, took the family toLéopoldville,Congo (nowKinshasa,Democratic Republic of the Congo).[6][8]
After graduating from high school, Kingsolver attendedDePauw University inGreencastle, Indiana, on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. She changed her major to biology after realizing that "classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of [them] get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby".[7][2]
Kingsolver was involved in activism on her campus, and took part in protests against theVietnam War.[6] In 1977, Kingsolver graduatedPhi Beta Kappa[9] with a Bachelor of Science, and moved to France for a year. In 1980, she enrolled in graduate school at theUniversity of Arizona,[7] where she earned a master's degree inecology andevolutionary biology.[10][11]
In 1985, Kingsolver married Joseph Hoffmann, and gave birth to their daughter Camille in 1987.[12][13] During the firstFirst Gulf War, she moved with her daughter toTenerife in theCanary Islands for a year, mostly due to her frustration over America's military involvement.[14] After returning to the United States in 1992, she separated from her husband.[13]
In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded an honoraryDoctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University.[15] That same year, she married Steven Lee Hopp, anornithologist, and their daughter Lily was born in 1996. In 2004, Kingsolver moved with her family to a farm inWashington County, Virginia.[6] In 2008, she received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters fromDuke University, where she delivered a commencement address entitled "How to Be Hopeful".[16]
In the late 1990s, Kingsolver was a founding member of theRock Bottom Remainders, a rock-and-roll band made up of published writers. Other band members includedAmy Tan,Matt Groening,Dave Barry, andStephen King, and they played for one week during the year. Kingsolver played the keyboard, but is no longer an active member of the band.[17]
In a 2010 interview withThe Guardian, Kingsolver said, "I never wanted to be famous, and still don't… the universe rewarded me with what I dreaded most". She said she created her own website just to compete with a plethora of fake ones "as a defense to protect my family from misinformation".[18]
Kingsolver lives in theAppalachia area of the United States. She said in 2020 that rural America is generally regarded by artistic elites with "a profound antipathy".[19]
Kingsolver began her full-time writing career in the mid-1980s as a science writer for the University of Arizona, which eventually led to freelance feature writing, including many cover stories for the local alternative weekly, theTucson Weekly.[7][11] She began her career in fiction writing after winning a short-story contest in a local Phoenix newspaper.[7]
Kingsolver's first novel,The Bean Trees, was published in 1988, and told the story of a young woman who leaves Kentucky for Arizona, adopting an abandoned child along the way; she wrote it at night while pregnant with her first child and struggling with insomnia.[11] Her next work of fiction, published in 1990, wasHomeland and Other Stories, a collection of short stories on a variety of topics exploring various themes from the evolution of cultural and ancestral lands to the struggles of marriage.[20]
The novelAnimal Dreams was also published in 1990,[21] followed byPigs in Heaven, the sequel toThe Bean Trees, in 1993.[22] Every book that Kingsolver has written sincePigs in Heaven has been onThe New York Times Best Seller list.[5]
The Poisonwood Bible, published in 1998, is one of her best-known works; it chronicles the lives of the wife and daughters of a Baptist missionary on a Christian mission in Africa.[23] Although the setting of the novel is somewhat similar to Kingsolver's own childhood in theDemocratic Republic of Congo (then "the Democratic Republic of Zaire"), the novel is not autobiographical.[6] The novel was chosen as anOprah's Book Club selection.[24]The Poisonwood Bible won the National Book Prize of South Africa and was shortlisted for both thePulitzer Prize andPEN/Faulkner Award.[25]
Her next novel, published in 2000, wasProdigal Summer, set in southern Appalachia.[26] In 2000, she was awarded theNational Humanities Medal by the U.S. PresidentBill Clinton.[27]
Kingsolver wrote aLos Angeles Times opinion piece following the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in the wake of theSeptember 11 attacks, which received widespread criticism for conflating innocent Afghans with the Taliban regime. She wrote, "I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, 'He started it!' and throwing rocks that keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, 'Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt.'"[28] By some accounts, she was "denounced as a traitor," but rebounded from these accusations and later wrote about them.[29]
Starting in April 2005, Kingsolver and her family spent a year making every effort to eat food produced as locally as possible.[30] Living on their farm in rural Virginia, they grew much of their own food and obtained most of the rest from their neighbors and other local farmers.[31] Kingsolver, her husband, and her elder daughter chronicled their experiences of that year in the bookAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, published in 2007. Although exceptions were made for staple ingredients not available locally, such as coffee andolive oil, the family grew vegetables, raised livestock, made cheese, and preserved much of their harvest.[30][32]Animal, Vegetable, Miracle won the 2008James Beard Foundation Award.
Kingsolver returned to novel-writing withThe Lacuna, published in 2009. Kingsolver received her firstWomen's Prize for Fiction for the novel in 2010.[4]The Lacuna won the 2010Orange Prize for Fiction.[33]Flight Behavior was published in 2012. It explores environmental themes and highlights the potential effects of global warming on themonarch butterfly.[34]
In 2011, Kingsolver was the first ever recipient of theDayton Literary Peace Prize Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. The newly named award to celebrate the U.S. diplomat who played an instrumental role in negotiating theDayton Peace Accords in 1995.[35] In 2014, Kingsolver was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by theLibrary of Virginia. The award recognizes outstanding and long-lasting contributions to literature by a Virginian.[36] In 2018 the Library of Virginia named her one of theVirginia Women in History.[37]
Unsheltered was published in 2018 and follows two families inVineland, New Jersey with one in the 1800s and the other in the aftermath ofHurricane Sandy.[38] Her latest book, published in 2022, isDemon Copperhead. The novel was inspired byDavid Copperfield and is set in southern Appalachia, dealing with the effects of theopioid crisis on the region's families.[2] In 2023,Demon Copperhead received the 2023Pulitzer Prize for Fiction alongsideHernan Diaz'sTrust, the first time the award was shared in its history.
Kingsolver is also a published poet and essayist. Two of her essay collections,High Tide in Tucson (1995) andSmall Wonder (2003), have been published, and an anthology of her poetry was published in 1998 under the titleAnother America. Her essay "Where to Begin" appears in the anthologyKnitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting(2013), published byW. W. Norton & Company. Her prose poetry also accompanied photographs byAnnie Griffiths Belt in a 2002 work titledLast Stand: America's Virgin Lands.[39]
Her major nonfiction works include her 1990 publicationHolding the Line: Women in theGreat Arizona Mine Strike of 1983[40][2] and 2007'sAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle, a description ofeating locally.[30] She has also been published as a science journalist in periodicals such asEconomic Botany on topics such as desert plants and bioresources.[7][41]
In 2000, Kingsolver established theBellwether Prize for Fiction. Named for thebellwether, the literary prize supports writers whose works support positive social change.[6] The award is given to a U.S. citizen for a previously unpublished work of fiction that addresses issues of social justice. The Bellwether Prize is awarded in even-numbered years and includes guaranteed major publication and a cash prize of US$25,000, fully funded by Kingsolver.[42] She has stated that she wanted to create a literary prize to "encourage writers, publishers, and readers to consider how fiction engages visions of social change and human justice".[43]In May 2011, thePEN American Center announced it would take over administration of the prize, to be known as the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.[44]
Kingsolver has written novels in both thefirst-person andthird-person narrative styles, and she frequently employs overlapping narratives.[26]
Kingsolver often writes about places and situations with which she is familiar; many of her stories are based in places she has lived, such asCentral Africa,Arizona, andAppalachia. She has stated that her novels are not autobiographical, although there are often commonalities between her life and her work.[6] Her work is often strongly idealistic[7] and has been called a form of activism.[45]
Her characters are frequently written around struggles for social equality, such as the hardships faced by undocumented immigrants, the working poor, and single mothers.[7] Other common themes in her work include the balancing of individuality with the desire to live in a community, and the interaction and conflict between humans and the ecosystems in which they live.[11] Kingsolver has been said to use prose and engaging narratives to make historical events, such as the Congo's struggles for independence, more interesting and engaging for the average reader.[6]
| Work | Year & Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Poisonwood Bible | 1999PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction | Shortlisted | ||
| 1999Women's Prize for Fiction | Shortlisted | |||
| 1999Pulitzer Prize for Fiction | Finalist | |||
| 1999 Ippy Awards | Audio Fiction | Won | [46] | |
| 2000Exclusive Books Boeke Prize | Judge's Award | Won | ||
| The Lacuna | 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction | Shortlisted | ||
| 2010Women's Prize for Fiction | Won | |||
| 2010Library of Virginia | Virginia Literary Awards (Fiction) | Won | [47] | |
| 2011International Dublin Literary Award | Shortlisted | |||
| Pigs in Heaven | 1993Los Angeles Times Book Prize | Fiction | Won | |
| 1994Bronze Wrangler | Western Novel | Won | ||
| Animal, Vegetable, Miracle | 2008Audie Awards | Narration by the Author | Finalist | |
| 2008Library of Virginia | Virginia Literary Awards (Non-Fiction) | Nominated | [48] | |
| 2008 Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service | Non-Fiction | Won | ||
| 2008Indies Choice Book Awards | Adult Non-Fiction | Won | ||
| 2008 James Beard Foundation award | Writing on Food | Won | [49] | |
| 2008Southern Book Prize | Non-Fiction | Won | ||
| Flight Behavior | 2012Goodreads Choice Awards | Fiction | Nominated | [50] |
| 2013Women's Prize for Fiction | Shortlisted | |||
| Unsheltered | 2018 Goodreads Choice Awards | Historical Fiction | Nominated | [51] |
| 2019 BookTube Prize | Fiction | Octofinalist | ||
| How to Fly in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons | 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards | Poetry | Nominated | [52] |
| Demon Copperhead | 2022James Tait Black Memorial Prize | Fiction Award | Won | |
| 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards | Fiction | Nominated | [53] | |
| 2023Women's Prize for Fiction | Won | |||
| 2023Books Are My Bag Readers' Awards | Fiction | Nominated | ||
| 2023Orwell Prize | Political Fiction | Shortlisted | ||
| 2023 Library of Virginia | Virginia Literary Awards (Fiction) | Nominated | ||
| 2023 BookTube Prize | Fiction | Gold Medal | [54] | |
| 2023Pulitzer Prize for Fiction | Won | |||
| 2024British Book Awards | Page-turner of the Year | Nominated |
Note: Kingsolver's Women's Prize for Fiction win forDemon Copperhead made her the first person to win the award twice.[55]
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