Born: 1955, Annapolis, MarylandLives: Washington County, Virginia
Barbara Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up in rural Kentucky. When she was seven her family moved to Léopoldville in the Congo, where her father worked as a physician. She studied at DePauw University, first on a music scholarship and then in biology, and earned a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
She worked as a science writer for the University of Arizona and as a freelance journalist before her first novel, The Bean Trees (1988). Since 2004 she has lived on a farm in Washington County, Virginia, in Appalachia.
Books
The Bean Trees (1988) · Animal Dreams (1990) · Pigs in Heaven (1993) · The Poisonwood Bible (1998) · Prodigal Summer (2000) · The Lacuna (2009) · Flight Behavior (2012) · Unsheltered (2018) · Demon Copperhead (2022)
Awards
National Humanities Medal, 2000
Women's Prize for Fiction for The Lacuna, 2010
Women's Prize for Fiction for Demon Copperhead, 2023
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Demon Copperhead, 2023
National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters, 2024