Introduction


Barbara Kingsolver
Some people are born to be writers: it just takes them a little while to figure that out. Barbara Kingsolver’s first essay was titled “Why We Need a New Elementary School.” It outlined the reasons her local school was unsafe and ultimately helped to secure an improvement bond. Since Kingsolver was only nine years old at the time, it was a major accomplishment—but only the first of many. In college, she studied everything from music to science, eventually doing graduate work in evolutionary biology. Though she worked as a scientific writer for the University of Arizona and then as a freelance writer, she finally turned to fiction full-time in the 1980s. Since then, Kingsolver has published twelve novels and won numerous awards, including the 2000 National Humanities Medal.

Essential Facts

  1. Before becoming a full-time author, Kingsolver held many jobs: typesetter, housecleaner, medical laboratory technician, translator, scientific writer, and freelance journalist.
  2. She wrote her first novel, The Bean Trees, at night during a terrible bout of insomnia during her pregnancy.
  3. Kingsolver instituted the Bellwether Prize in 1997, which is awarded in even-numbered years to a first novel that uses literature as a tool for social change.
  4. Kingsolver loves to write about people’s relationship to the land. She counts Henry David Thoreau as one of her many influences.
  5. Kingsolver now lives on a farm in Virginia and raises chickens, sheep, turkeys, and has a huge vegetable garden.