Barbara Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky, earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. She has traveled throughout the world as a researcher and journalist, and lived for nearly two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving back to southern Appalachia. Since 2004, she and her husband have raised their family and farmed in southwestern Virginia, in the mountains she considers her home territory.

Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt (2002), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), The Lacuna (2009), Flight Behavior (2012), Unsheltered (2018), How To Fly (In 10,000 Easy Lessons) (2020), Demon Copperhead (2022), Coyote’s Wild Home (2023), and Partita, (2026). She served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have been adopted into the core literature curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. She has contributed to more than fifty literary anthologies, and her reviews and articles have appeared in many major U.S. newspapers and magazines. Click here to view complete bibliography.

Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was named the Best Book of the 21st Century by a New York Times readers’ poll. Other honors for her work include the National Humanities Medal in 2000; multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association; and selection as the 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Two of Kingsolver’s books have been Oprah Book Club picks, and she is the only two-time winner of Britain’s prestigious Women’s Prize (formerly known as the Orange Prize). She was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received The National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Barbara’s husband, Steven Hopp, is an environmental educator and active member of numerous local nonprofits. Their two daughters, Camille (born in 1987) and Lily (1996), also live with their families in southwestern Virginia. In addition to their professional and community engagements, Steven and Barbara raise an extensive vegetable garden, chickens, and a flock of Icelandic sheep that supply Barbara’s knitting avocation.

 For a complete list of her published works, see the Bibliography section of this website. Her books are described individually in Books; a complete list of awards earned by each of them can be found in Honors and Awards.