Barbara Kingsolver: *1955

Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in eastern Kentucky. Kingsolver left Kentucky to attend DePauw University in Indiana, where she majored in biology. Before and after graduating in 1977, Kingsolver lived and worked in Europe.

After graduate school, a position as a scientific writer for the University of Arizona soon led her into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her articles have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines in North America and abroad.

From 1985 through 1987, Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by day, but she was writing fiction by night. She began to write The Bean Trees, a novel about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky and finds herself living in urban Tucson. This novel was enthusiastically received by critics.

"A novel can educate to some extent," she once said. "But first, a novel has to entertain--that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessiblity. I believe in plot. I want English professors to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with--who may not often read anything but the Sears catalogue--to read my books."

Barbara Kingsolver lives with her husband and their two daughters in Tuscon, Arizona, and has a second home on a farm in southern Appalachia.

"I don't ever write about real people", she said. "That would be stealing, first of all. And second of all, art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window. An artist has to look out that window, isolate one or two suggestive things, and embroider them together with poetry and fabrication, to create a revelation. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread."

Some of her best known works are: The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer.