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Barbara
Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland while
her father was serving as a Naval doctor. Both he and Barbara’s
mother were natives of Kentucky and soon after Barbara was born they
returned home.
Kingsolver grew up in Carlisle, a small eastern Kentucky
town. In 1963 her father provided medical care in central Africa,
and again in 1967 in St. Lucia. He took his family with him on both
of these journeys exposing Barbara to cultures beyond her Kentucky
home.
She
earned a Bachelor’s degree from DePauw University in Indiana and in
1977 graduated with a Master’s of Science degree from the University
of Arizona. While attending Arizona, however, she enrolled in a
writing class taught by
Francine Prose, an author Kingsolver greatly
admired.
In 1985 Kingsolver was
a freelance journalist by trade and working to become a fiction
writer in her spare time. She married a chemist, became pregnant
and began suffering from insomnia. During this time, Kingsolver sat
in her closet and began to write her first novel,
The Bean Trees,
a novel about a young woman who leaves her home in rural Kentucky
and finds herself living in urban
Tucson.
In
1988,
The Bean Trees
was published. In 1998 it was reissued in a special ten-year
anniversary hardcover edition in 1998 and praised by critics. Her
next novel,
Poisonwood Bible, took her many years to write.
The story of a missionary family's life in the Congo catapulted
Kingsolver's writing career. Since then, she has written
numerous short stories,
Pigs in Heaven, and
The Prodigal
Summer (reviewed
by SLR).
As
is the case with so many great writers, Kingsolver’s childhood is a
rich resource for writing. Her Kentucky roots are evident in a
number of her works. She divorced and later remarried Steve Hopp.
She lives outside Tucson, Arizona with her husband, and her
daughters Camille, and Lily.
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Read our review of
Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer.
This
reader's guide to
Poisonwood Bible
may be helpful to you:
For
more books by Barbara Kingsolver click here!
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