Author Spotlight: Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up in rural Kentucky.  She counts among her most important early influences: the Bookmobile, a large family vegetable garden, the surrounding fields and woods, and parents who were tolerant of nature study (anything but snakes and mice could be kept in the house), but intolerant of TV. 

Beginning around the age of nine, Barbara kept a journal, wrote poems and stories, and entered every essay contest she ever heard about.  Her first published work, "Why We Need a New Elementary School," included an account of how the school's ceiling fell and injured her teacher.  The essay was printed in the local newspaper prior to a school-bond election; the school bond passed.  For her efforts Barbara won a $25 savings bond, on which she expected to live comfortably in adulthood.

After high school graduation she left Kentucky to enter DePauw University on a piano scholarship.  She transferred from the music school to the college of liberal arts because of her desire to study practically everything (including one creative writing class), and graduated with a degree in biology.  She spent the late 1970's in Greece, France and England seeking her fortune, but had not found it by the time her work visa expired in 1979.  She then moved to Tucson, Arizona, out of curiosity to see the American southwest, and eventually pursued graduate studies in evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.  During her student and post-college years she supported herself in a wide variety of jobs including typesetter, housecleaner, medical laboratory technician, artist's model, archaeological assistant, translator, teaching assistant, and copy editor.  After graduate school she worked as a scientific writer for the University of Arizona before becoming a freelance journalist.

Kingsolver's short fiction and poetry began to be published during the mid-1980's, along with the articles she wrote regularly for regional and national periodicals.  She wrote her first novel, The Bean Trees, entirely at night, in the abundant free time made available by chronic insomnia during pregnancy.  Completed just before the birth of her first child, in March 1987, the novel was published by HarperCollins the following year with a modest first printing.  Widespread critical acclaim and word-of-mouth support have kept the book continuously in print since then.  The Bean Trees has now been adopted into the core curriculum of high school and college literature classes across the U.S., and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

She has written eleven more books since then, including the novels Animal Dreams , Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, and Prodigal Summer ; a collection of short stories (Homeland ); poetry (Another America ); an oral history (Holding the Line ); two essay collections (High Tide in Tucson, Small Wonder); a prose-poetry text accompanying the photography of Annie Griffiths Belt (Last Stand ); and most recently, her first full-length narrative non-fiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  She has contributed to dozens of literary anthologies, and her reviews and articles have appeared in most major U.S. newspapers and magazines.  Her books have earned major literary awards at home and abroad, and in 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our nation's highest honor for service through the arts.  

In 1997 Barbara established the Bellwether Prize, awarded in even-numbered years to a first novel that exemplifies outstanding literary quality and a commitment to literature as a tool for social change.  For information about past winners and upcoming deadlines, see www.bellwetherprize.org.

Barbara is the mother of two daughters, Camille and Lily, and is married to Steven Hopp, a professor of environmental sciences.  In 2004, after more than 25 years in Tucson, Arizona, Barbara left the southwest to return to her native terrain.  She now lives with her family on a farm in southwestern Virginia where they raise free-range chickens, turkeys, Icelandic sheep, and an enormous vegetable garden.  For more information about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and the family's local food project, see animalvegetablemiracle.org.

 Writings: (Titles in bold are held by the Escondido Public Library)

• The Bean Trees (novel), 1988.
• Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (nonfiction), 1989.
• Animal Dreams (novel), 1990.
• Another America/Otra America (poetry), 1992.
• Pigs In Heaven (novel), 1993.
• High Tide in Tucson (nonfiction), 1995.
• The Poisonwood Bible (novel), 1997.
• Homeland and Other Stories (short story collection), 1999
• Prodigal Summer (novel), 2000.
• Small Wonder (nonfiction), 2002.
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (nonfiction), 2007

 Sources:

 www.kingsolver.com 

Newsmakers, Issue 1. Thomson Gale, 2005.