Today's author is Barbara Kingsolver.
Quick Facts:
1. She was born in 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up in rural Kentucky.
2. After high school she entered DePauw University on a piano scholarship, but she transferred from the music school to the college of liberal arts and graduated with a degree in biology.
3. After living in Greece, France and England, she moved to Tucson, Arizona and pursued graduate studies in evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
4. During her student and post-college years she held various jobs including typesetter, housecleaner, medical laboratory technician, artist's model, archaeological assistant, translator, teaching assistant, and copy editor.
5. She wrote her first novel, The Bean Trees, entirely at night due to chronic insomnia during pregnancy.
6. She has written eleven books (as well as poems, short stories and essays) since then, including Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, and Prodigal Summer.
7. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal for service through the arts.
8. She established the Bellwether Prize, awarded in even-numbered years to a first novel that exemplifies outstanding literary quality and a commitment to literature as a tool for social change.
9. She is the mother of two daughters, Camille and Lily, and is married to Steven Hopp, a professor of environmental sciences.
10. She currently lives on a farm in Virginia where she raises free-range chickens, turkeys, Icelandic sheep, and an enormous vegetable garden.
From her latest non-fiction work, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."
Are you a fan of Barbara Kingsolver? Which one of her books is your favorite?
I've read The Poisonwood Bible and I loved it. I need to read the rest of her books.
