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Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland while her father was serving as a Naval doctor.  Both he and Barbara’s mother were natives of Kentucky and soon after Barbara was born they returned home.

Kingsolver grew up in Carlisle, a small eastern Kentucky town. In 1963 her father provided medical care in central Africa, and again in 1967 in St. Lucia. He took his family with him on both of these journeys exposing Barbara to cultures beyond her Kentucky home.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree from DePauw University in Indiana and in 1977 graduated with a Master’s of Science degree from the University of Arizona.  While attending Arizona, however, she enrolled in a writing class taught by Francine Prose, an author Kingsolver greatly admired.

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In 1985 Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by trade and working to become a fiction writer in her spare time.  She married a chemist, became pregnant and began suffering from insomnia.  During this time, Kingsolver sat in her closet and began to write her first novel, The Bean Trees, a novel about a young woman who leaves her home in rural Kentucky and finds herself living in urban Tucson.

In 1988, The Bean Trees was published. In 1998 it was reissued in a special ten-year anniversary hardcover edition in 1998 and praised by critics. Her next novel, Poisonwood Bible, took her many years to write. The story of a missionary family’s life in the Congo catapulted Kingsolver’s writing career.  Since then, she has written numerous short stories, Pigs in Heaven, and The Prodigal Summer (reviewed by SLR). She recently wrote Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.).

As is the case with so many great writers, Kingsolver’s childhood is a rich resource for writing.  Her Kentucky roots are evident in a number of her works.  She divorced and later remarried Steve Hopp.  She lives outside Tucson, Arizona with her husband, and her daughters Camille, and Lily.

• Read our review of Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.

This reader’s guide to Poisonwood Bible may be helpful to you:

For more books by Barbara Kingsolver click here!