Barbara Kingsolver, born on April 8, 1955, is a novelist whose work has garnered attention for its focus on social justice, climate change, and community. Raised in rural Kentucky, Kingsolver later went on to attend college at DePauw University in Indiana, where she majored in biology. Kingsolver was involved in several activist groups on campus. After completing her degree, she went on to earn a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. Throughout her graduate education, Kingsolver worked as a science writer, which later transformed into a full-time writing career as Kingsolver began to write for news publications and publish short stories in local papers.
Kingsolver published her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988; a collection of short stories was released shortly after in 1990. Kingsolver went on to publish eight more novels. Her most famous work, The Poisonwood Bible, follows a wife and her daughters after their move to Africa as Christian missionaries—a story loosely based on Kingsolver's own childhood move to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with her family. In 1997, Kingsolver 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.
Kingsolver's work often features overlapping themes that parallel Kingsolver's life, adapting settings from Arizona, Appalachia, and Africa, and highlighting issues faced by wives, mothers, immigrants, and rural lower-class communities. Her novels are well-known for their ideological commitment to social justice. She has also published three non-fiction works, one of which chronicles her family's experiment to eat as locally as possible. She continues to be an activist for agrarian lifestyles and sustainability.
Kingsolver and her family now live in southern Appalachia, where Kingsolver continues to write and engage with social activism across a variety of causes.
Written in 1980, Animal Dreams is a novel written by American writer Barbara Kingsolver. Like in her previous novels, Animal Dreams focuses on the relationship between man and nature and it also focuses of the idea of social justice. Her novels...
The Bean Trees draws from many of the experiences of its author, Barbara Kingsolver, whose personal life and academic training provide some of the background for the novel. The novel is not autobiographical, but there are numerous parallels...
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by American author Barbara Kingsolver. It tells the story of a young boy who grows up in rural Appalachia, navigating numerous difficulties. Kingsolver has said it is a modern, Southern retelling of Charles Dickens...
Flight Behavior, published in 2012, explores a young woman's life as a housewife in fictional Feathertown, Tennessee. Dellarobia Turnbow quickly attracts both local and national attention after discovering a large colony of monarch butterflies in...
High Tide in Tucson is a compilation of 25 essays by Barbara Kingsolver, a writer and ecologist, centering around the themes of family, community, and ecology. The book was published in 1995, and praised for its well-written narrative style and...
Written by Barbara Kingsolver and published in 2009, The Lacuna is Kingsolver’s sixth novel. The Lacuna traces the journey of Harrison William Shepherd from Mexico City, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to America, the Cold War, and the Red Scare....
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver's most heralded novel, is the story of the Price family and their journey into the African Congo as Baptist missionaries in the late 1950's. The novel is told from the perspective of the four Price children...
Written by American author Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer (released in 2000) tells the story of a small town in Appalachia (the United States) and the various people who inhabit it. Particularly, it tells three separate - but connected -...
