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Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland and grew up in Eastern Kentucky. As a child, Kingsolver used to beg her mother to tell her bedtime stories. She soon started to write stories and essays of her own, and at the age of nine, she began to keep a journal. After graduating with a degree in biology form De Pauw University in Indiana in 1977, Kingsolver pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She earned her Master of Science degree in the early 1980s. A position as a science writer for the University of Arizona soon led Kingsolver into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her articles have appeared in a number of publications, including The Nation, The New York Times, and Smithsonian magazines. In 1985, she married a chemist, becoming pregnant the following year. During her pregnancy, Kingsolver suffered from insomnia. To ease her boredom when she couldn't sleep, she began writing fiction Barbara Kingsolver's first fiction novel, The Bean Trees, published in 1988, is about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky and finds herself living in urban Tucson. Since then, Kingsolver has written other novels, including Holding the Line, Homeland, and Pigs in Heaven. In 1995, after the publication of her essay collection High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, De Pauw University. Her latest works include The Lacuna and Flight Behavior. Barbara's nonfiction book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was written with her family. This is the true story of the family's adventures as they move to a farm in rural Virginia and vow to eat locally for one year. They grow their own vegetables, raise their own poultry and buy the rest of their food directly from farmers markets and other local sources. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from The Poisonwood Bible… (more)
The Poisonwood Bible 25,827 copies, 495 reviews
The Bean Trees 9,648 copies, 181 reviews
Prodigal Summer 8,804 copies, 191 reviews
Pigs in Heaven 6,004 copies, 82 reviews
Animal Dreams 5,488 copies, 75 reviews
The Lacuna 5,166 copies, 254 reviews
Flight Behavior 3,824 copies, 231 reviews
Small Wonder: Essays 2,206 copies, 35 reviews
Demon Copperhead 2,048 copies, 90 reviews
Unsheltered 1,995 copies, 109 reviews
Homeland and Other Stories (Author) 1,638 copies, 13 reviews
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Introduction, some editions) 4,222 copies, 55 reviews
Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting (Contributor) 252 copies, 14 reviews
My Favorite Fantasy Story (Contributor) 163 copies
Best Food Writing 2007 (Contributor) 113 copies, 1 review

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Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
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