Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Born April 8, 1955
Occupation novelist, poet, essayist
Nationality USA
Writing period 1988-present
Genres Fiction, Historical fiction, Nonfiction
Subjects Social justice, Feminism, Environmentalism
Debut works The Bean Trees
Website http://www.kingsolver.com

Barbara Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is an American fiction writer. She has written several novels, poems, short stories and essays, and established the Bellwether Prize for "literature of social change."

Contents

[edit] Biography

Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland but was raised near Carlisle, Kentucky. [1]

Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. Eventually, however, she changed her major to biology.

In the late 1970s, Kingsolver lived in a number of places, including Greece, France, and Tucson, Arizona, working variously as an archaeological digger, copy editor, housecleaner, biological researcher and translator. She earned a Master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. She then took a job as a science writer for the university. The science writing led to some freelance feature writing and journalism. In 1986, she won an Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing. Her first novel, The Bean Trees, was published in 1988.

Her subsequent books were Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (non-fiction); a short story collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989); the novels Animal Dreams (1990), Pigs in Heaven (1993), The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and Prodigal Summer (2000); a poetry collection, Another America (1992); the essay collections High Tide in Tucson(1995) and Small Wonder: Essays (2002) Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, prose poetry with the photographs of Annie Griffiths Belt; and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007). The Poisonwood Bible (1998) was a bestseller that won the National Book Prize of South Africa, made finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner award, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection. In 2000, Barbara was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton.

In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University.

Barbara Kingsolver lives with her husband Steven Hopp, their daughter Lily, and her daughter Camille, on a farm in Southwest Virginia.

[edit] Literary themes

Community, economic injustice and cultural difference inform the themes of Kingsolver's work. In The Bean Trees, the main character meets a family of Guatemalan immigrants whose daughter was taken by the government in an effort to force them to speak out about their underground teaching circle. They were forced to escape torture and death in their home country. In The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver examined the role of the United States and other political powers in colonial and post-colonial Africa. The sequel to "The Bean Trees", her 1993 novel Pigs in Heaven examines the conflicts between individual and community rights, through a story about a Cherokee child adopted out of her tribe.

Kingsolver has said, "If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread." [2]

[edit] Works

  • 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: Limitied 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)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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