BARBARA KINGSOLVER

(April 8, 1955–)

Barbara Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland, but spent most of her childhood in eastern Kentucky. In 1977, she graduated, magna cum laude, from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, with a degree in biology, then earned an M.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona in 1981. After graduate school, Kingsolver worked at the University of Arizona as a technical writer and, later, worked as a freelance journalist, writing for magazines ranging from Redbook to Smithsonian. She is married to musician and biologist Steven Hopp and has two daughters.

Beset with insomnia while pregnant with her first child, Kingsolver spent her nights writing what became her first novel, The Bean Trees. On the day she brought her daughter home from the hospital, she got a phone call from New York with the news that her manuscript had been accepted for publication.

The Bean Trees received glowing reviews. Margaret Randall, in The Women's Review of Books, said the story was “propelled by a marvelous ear, a fast-moving humor and the powerful undercurrent of human struggle.” Jack Butler in the New York Times Book Review felt the novel was “as richly connected as a fine poem, but reads like realism.” Subsequent Kingsolver novels, as well as collections of short stories and essays, have been equally well received. In 2000, President Clinton awarded Kingsolver the National Humanities Medal.

Themes which run through Kingsolver's work include the tension between individualism and one's need for community, the search for justice in an often unjust world, and the need for reconciliation between humans and the natural world.

“The natural history and culture of southern Appalachia were the most appealing and defining elements of my childhood,” says Kingsolver. “Southern Appalachia remains the region that feels like home to me, and although I've lived and worked in Arizona for twenty years, my family now spends a large part of each year back ‘home’ in southern Appalachia. To my mind, it's the only place on earth where the birds sound right, and people do too.”

The opening scene of The Bean Trees introduces the reader to Missy Greer (who soon changes her name to Taylor Greer) a Kentucky high school student who's determined to escape the sort of life many of her classmates have heedlessly embraced.

The narrator in the scene from Prodigal Summer is Deanna Wolfe, a biologist who's employed as a United States Forest Service ranger in the Appalachian highlands. She has just encountered a hunter named Eddie Bondo who has asked her to accompany him on the trail.

OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

PRIMARY

Novels: Prodigal Summer (2000), The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (1998), Pigs in Heaven (1993), Animal Dreams (1991), The Bean Trees (1988). Nonfiction: Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands (2002) Small Wonder (2002), High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (1995), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989). Poetry: Another America/Otra America (1992). Short stories: Homeland and Other Stories (1989).

SECONDARY

Contemporary Authors, Vol. 134, 284–89. “Messing with the Sacred: An Interview with Barbara Kingsolver,” [transcription of KET, The Kentucky Network's 1997 Signature: Barbara Kingsolver program, produced & directed by Guy Mendes], Appalachian Journal 28:3 (spring 2001), 304–24. Amy Pense, “Barbara Kingsolver” [Interview], Poets & Writers Magazine (July/August 1993), 14–21. Meredith Sue Willis, “Barbara Kingsolver, Moving On,” Appalachian Journal 22:1 (fall 1994), 78–86.