Barbara Kingsolver
by
findingDulcinea Staff
In 2000 Kingsolver received the United States National Humanities Medal, the nation's highest honor for service through the arts. This award represents Kingsolver’s impressive ouevre of novels, poetry, and essays.
Here's the Way I See It
The author completed her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1986 just before the birth of her first daughter, Camille. HarperCollins published the novel the following year with a modest first printing. Widespread critical acclaim and word-of-mouth support have kept the book continuously in print since then. The Bean Trees has been adopted into the core curriculum of high school and college literature classes across the country, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Kingsolver has maintained her literary success with bestsellers: The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver’s graduate degree in evolutionary biology and interest in local and organic foods resulted in her most recent piece of nonfiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
In a 1995 interview at San Francisco's City Arts & Lectures series, Kingsolver talked about her collection of essays, High Tides in Tucson. She describes the influences of multiculturalism, the pressures of publicity, and how she learned to write with a Southern accent.
Source: Salon.com
More recently, Salon.com featured an article on Kingsolver’s latest book: a documentation of her family’s 12-month attempt to eat only what they could grow themselves or obtain locally.
Source: Salon.com
Read an excerpt from Kingsolver’s newest work: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and then listen to an audio commentary from NPR.
Source: National Public Radio
To find out more about how nature inspires Kingsolver’s writing, read the transcript from a 2002 PBS interview between the author and Bill Moyers.
Source: PBS
Read this blog entry ruminates on Bernard Goldberg’s critique of Ms. Kingsolver’s local food effort. Goldberg’s most recent book deemed Kingsolver America’s 74th most dangerous person because of her denunciation of conventional food practices.
Source: 50 Books
Rules of the Road
Visit the FAQ section of Ms. Kingsolver’s official Web site to read her answers to readers’ questions. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find out her “10 Rules for Fiction Writing."
Source: Barbara Kingsolver Web site
How Resourceful
Visit Amazon.com for publishing and purchasing information for Kingsolver’s newest work: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
Source: Amazon.com
Wondering what to do with the rhubarb you picked up from the local farmer’s market? Visit the Web site created as a supplement to Kingsolver’s yearlong experiment in local eating. The site provides information on conventional and organic farming practices as well as recipes that incorporate local produce.
Source: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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