Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist and poet, born in 1955 and raised in rural Kentucky. She trained as a scientist, holding degrees in biology, ecology and evolutionary biology, and worked as a freelance writer before turning to fiction.

Her novels include The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family in the Congo, The Lacuna, and Demon Copperhead, a retelling of Dickens's David Copperfield set in the Appalachian Virginia of the opioid crisis, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. With The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead she became the first author to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice.

Her nonfiction includes Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, an account of her family's year of eating locally. Her work returns to social justice, biodiversity, and the ties between people and the places they live. She has received the National Humanities Medal and founded the Bellwether Prize for literature of social change.