Kingsolver, Barbara (1955-…), is an American author best known for her novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998). In the novel, a Baptist preacher takes his wife and four daughters to a remote African village on a missionary project in 1959. In the village, the family undergoes a variety of hardships. The family eventually separates, and the last part of the novel follows the members individually through the next 30 years of their lives. Like Kingsolver’s earlier fiction, this novel portrays strong-willed young women and humanely explores political and social issues. Kingsolver’s books have also been praised for their sensitivity to nature.
Kingsolver gained attention with her first novel, The Bean Trees (1988). The novel describes the travels of Taylor Greer, a Kentucky woman who eventually settles in Arizona and adopts a 3-year-old Cherokee girl named Turtle. Kingsolver wrote a sequel called Pigs in Heaven (1993), telling the story of Greer and her daughter as a Cherokee lawyer challenges Turtle’s adoption under laws that restrict adoptions of Native American children. Animal Dreams (1990) is a critically praised novel about a woman who returns to her Arizona hometown after an absence of 14 years to care for her dying father and rediscovers her roots.
Prodigal Summer (2000) tells three interwoven stories set in southern Appalachia. The Lacuna (2009) mixes fact and fiction as it follows the adventures of a character named Harrison William Shepherd in Mexico and the United States from the 1930’s through the 1950’s. Flight Behavior (2012) is set in Appalachia and explores the threat of global warming. Kingsolver also explores the dangers of climate change as well as other environmental and social problems in Unsheltered (2018). Demon Copperhead (2022), the story of a modern-day boy growing up in poverty in rural Appalachia, draws inspiration from the classic novel David Copperfield by the English author Charles Dickens. Demon Copperhead shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Kingsolver’s short stories were collected in Homeland (1989). Another America/Otra America (1992) is a book of poetry on Latin American themes, with Spanish translations accompanying the English-language originals. Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989) is a nonfiction account of the role women played in a labor dispute. In Last Stand (2002), Kingsolver’s descriptions of America’s virgin lands are accompanied by the photographs of Annie Griffiths Belt. Kingsolver; Stephen L. Hopp, her husband; and Camille Kingsolver, her daughter, wrote Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007), an account of how the family ate home-grown food from their garden for a year. Kingsolver’s essays have been collected in High Tide in Tucson (1995) and Small Wonder (2002).
Barbara Ellen Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955, in Annapolis, Maryland. She graduated from DePauw University in 1977 and received a Master of Science degree from the University of Arizona in 1981.
