Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver bigraphy, stories - American author, poet and essayist.

Barbara Kingsolver : biography

April 8, 1955 –

Barbara Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the former Republic of Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family’s attempts to eat locally.

Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Each of her books published since 1993 has been on the New York Times Best Seller list. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize’s Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011, UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna and the National Humanities Medal. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change."

Bellwether Prize

In 2000, Barbara Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize. Named after the bellwether, the literary prize is intended to support writers whose unpublished works support positive social change. The Bellwether is awarded in even-numbered years, and includes guaranteed major publication and a cash prize of US$25,000, fully funded by Kingsolver. 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".

Works

Kingsolver’s major published works are:

  • The Bean Trees, 1988, 1st UK edition 1989, Limited edition (200) 1992
  • Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983, 1989
  • Homeland and Other Stories, 1989
  • Animal Dreams, 1990
  • Another America, 1992
  • Pigs in Heaven, 1993
  • High Tide in Tucson, 1995, also: Limited edition (150)1995
  • The Poisonwood Bible, 1998
  • Prodigal Summer, 2000
  • Small Wonder: Essays, 2002
  • Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands, 2002 (with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt)
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle 2007, (with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver)
  • The Lacuna, 2009
  • Flight Behavior, 2012

Literary style and themes

Kingsolver has written novels in both the first person and third person narrative styles, and she frequently employs overlapping narratives. Many of her works display her thorough knowledge of biology and ecology; for example, the novel Prodigal Summer has extensive commentary on the value of higher predators in ecosystems, and many of her essays in the book Small Wonder are based upon the lessons of biodiversity. Her books are often characterized as having distinct female voices.

Kingsolver’s literary subjects are varied, but she often writes about places and situations with which she is familiar; many of her stories are based in places she has lived in, such as central Africa and Arizona. She has stated emphatically that her novels are not autobiographical, although there are often commonalities between her life and her work. Her work is often strongly idealistic and her writing has been called a form of activism. Kingsolver’s characters are frequently written around struggles for social equality, such as the hardships faced by illegal immigrants, the working poor, and single mothers. 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. 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.