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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.
For published interviews, biographical entries and further information, see the Bibliography section of this website. Also available is an hour-long PBS documentary in which Barbara speaks extensively about writing, her background and her published works. It is suitable for classroom use or book discussion groups, and can be ordered from Annenberg/CPB Multimedia Collection, P.O. Box 2345, South Burlington, VT, 05403-2345, or call 1-800-532-7637. The cost is $39.95, and all sales go to PBS.
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