Barbara Kingsolver

Writer

Raised in Kentucky, Barbara Kingsolver was a journalist and science writer before the 1988 publication of her first novel, The Bean Trees. The book drew critical praise, as have all her subsequent novels, including Animal Dreams (1990), Pigs in Heaven (1993), The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and Prodigal Summer (2000). Kingsolver often writes about family and community in America, but she has also written about the Congo, as well as essays, poems, stories and a non-fiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989).