Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is an American fiction writer. She has written several novels and poems, and established the Bellwether Prize for "literature of social change".

Biography

Barbara Kingsolver was born April 8, 1955. She grew up in Nicholas County, Kentucky, "in the middle of an alfalfa field in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields." http://www.kingsolver.com/about/about.asp

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April 8 - 1955 - Nicholas County, Kentucky - Alfalfa - Kentucky

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Kingsolver graduated from DePauw University in 1977. She pursued graduate studies at the University of Arizona in the early 1980s, where she got her Masters of Science. In 1985 she became a freelance journalist, while continuing to write fiction by night. Kingsolver began writing The Bean Trees in a closet during a bout of insomnia. She also became active in organizations advocating social change and humanitarian goals.

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DePauw University - 1977 - University of Arizona - 1985 - Insomnia - Humanitarian

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In 1997 Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize which is awarded on even-numbered years to writing that supports social change. The prize is limited to authors who have no previous major works published.

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She divides her time between Tucson, Arizona, and Kentucky, and has spent periods of time residing in other countries - as a child in the Congo, where The Poisonwood Bible was set. She is married to Stephen Hopp, a faculty member at the University of Arizona, with whom she occasionally collaborates on musical and literary projects.http://magazine.audubon.org/features0009/scarlet.html

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Tucson, Arizona - The Poisonwood Bible - University of Arizona

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