Barbara Kingsolver

Born in Maryland in 1955, Barbara Kingsolver moved with her family to Kentucky at age two and later relocated to Léopoldville, Congo. A classical pianist, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship but later changed her major to biology. Kingsolver later earned a master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona. After graduation, she worked as a freelance journalist and settled in Tucson, Arizona. Kingsolver published her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988. Kingsolver’s writing career took off with the 1998 publication of her best-known novel, The Poisonwood Bible, which won the National Book Prize of South Africa. She went on to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the inaugural Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Kingsolver the National Humanities Medal. Her most recent novel, Demon Copperhead (2022), explores the opioid crisis in southern Appalachia and won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A longtime advocate for social justice, in 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, a literary prize awarded to U.S. writers whose work supports positive social change. Kingsolver lives and works on a farm in southern Appalachia with her husband Steven Hopp and her two grown daughters.