Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky.
She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the
University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and
author since 1985. At various times she has lived in England,
France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa,
Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson,
Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently
resides.
Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988),
Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine
Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs
in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible
(1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand:
America's Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths (2002),
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), The Lacuna
(2009), Flight Behavior (2012), Unsheltered (2018), How To Fly (In
10,000 Easy Lessons) (2020), Demon Copperhead (2022), and
coauthored with Lily Kingsolver, Coyote's Wild Home (2023). She
served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001.
Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th
Century by Writers Digest, and in 2023 won a Pulitzer Prize for her
novel Demon Copperhead. In 2000 she received the National
Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through
the arts. Her books have been translated into more than thirty
languages and have been adopted into the core curriculum in high
schools and colleges throughout the nation. Critical acclaim for
her work includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers
Association and the American Library Association, a James Beard
award, two-time Oprah Book Club selection, and the national book
award of South Africa, among others. She was awarded Britain's
prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize)
for both Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna, making Kingsolver the
first author in the history of the prize to win it twice. In 2011,
Kingsolver was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body
of her work. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters.
She has two daughters, Camille (born in 1987) and Lily (1996). She
and her husband, Steven Hopp, live on a farm in southern Appalachia
where they raise an extensive vegetable garden and Icelandic sheep.
"There are few ambitious, successful and beautiful novels. Lucky for us, we have one now, in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible . . . this awed reviewer hardly knows where to begin." -- Jane Smiley, Washington Post Book World"Fully realized, richly embroidered, triumphant." -- Newsweek"Kingsolver's powerful new book is actually an old-fashioned 19th-century novel, a Hawthornian tale of sin and redemption and the 'dark necessity' of history." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times"A powerful new epic . . . She has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review"Powerful . . . Kingsolver is a gifted magician of words." -- Time"Beautifully written . . . Kingsolver's tale of domestic tragedy is more than just a well-told yarn . . . Played out against the bloody backdrop of political struggles in Congo that continue to this day, it is also particularly timely." -- People"Tragic, and remarkable. . . . A novel that blends outlandish experience with Old Testament rhythms of prophecy and doom." -- USA Today"The book's sheer enjoyability is given depth by Kingsolver's insight and compassion for Congo, including its people, and their language and sayings." -- Boston Globe"Compelling, lyrical and utterly believable." -- Chicago Tribune
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