Barbara Kingsolver’s novels are well received by critics and she has won many awards. She is the author of novels, poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support literature of social change in 2000. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2000, which is a high honor for service through the arts. Her novel, The Poisonwood Bible, won the National Book Prize of South Africa, and was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award. However, her most notable awards include the James Beard Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edward Abbey EcoFiction Award, the Physicians for Social Responsibility National Award, and the Arizona Civil Liberties Union Award. Additionally, her most recent novel, The Lacuna, won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. Every book that Kingsolver has written since 1993 has been on The New York Times Best Seller list. Kingsolver’s work has also been translated into more than twenty languages. Book List
The Bean Tree, 1988
Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983, 1989
Homeland and Other Stories, 1989
Animal Dreams, 1990
Another America, 1992
Pigs in Heaven, 1993
High Tide in Tuscon, 1995, also: Limited edition (150) 1995
The Poisonwood Bible, 1998
Prodigal Summer, 2000
Small Wonder: Essays, 2002
Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, 2002
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 2007, (with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver)
The Lacuna, 2009
ReviewsThe Lacuna
“Kingsolver uses newspaper clippings, journal entries, and memoir excerpts to tell the story of celebrated author Harrison Shepherd. In 1929, 13-year-old Harrison spends his days exploring the waters off the remote Mexican island Isla Pixol and learning to cook in the hacienda kitchen. Harrison's mother, a self-absorbed Mexican beauty, showers all her attention on her new lover while his American father remains behind in Washington, D.C. Harrison's skill in the kitchen eventually earns him a job in the household of famed muralist Diego Rivera and his vibrant, artistic wife Frida Kahlo. But it is Harrison's friendship with Kahlo and her guest, the revolutionary Leon Trotsky, that alters the course of Harrison's young life forever.” Bookmarks Magazine
New York Times Book Review
"The Lacuna can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices." Liesl Schillinger
Animal, Mineral, Vegetable
“The Kingsolver family, with novelist Barbara as matriarch, leaves its home in Tucson and moves to an ancestral farm in southern Appalachia. The goal? To live for a year eating only food grown on the farm or those nearby. That means constant zucchini in the summer, canned vegetables in the winter, learning the intricacies of turkey mating, and welcoming back-breaking labor. Since food typically travels an average of 1,500 miles before it arrives on our plates, this first-person account explores how we can create a closer relationship with the food we eat and why we should try.” Bookmarks Magazine
New York Times Book Review
"Kingsolver remains aware of how challenging most readers will find her program. … But she generally succeeds at adopting the warm tone of a confiding friend who can win you over with self-deprecating, you-too-can-make-cheese-every-day enthusiasm." Corby Kummer
The Poisonwood Bible
“The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.” Harper Collins
New York Times Book Review
“Kingsolver’s powerful new book is actually an old-fashioned 19th-century novel, a Hawthornian tale of sin and redemption and the ‘dark necessity’ of history.” Michiko Kakutani
The Bean Trees
“Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.” Harper Collins
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews
“It is most impressive to realize that this was Kingsolver’s first novel and yet everything about it is so right. The voices are most appealing and authentic, the character development is illuminated, the pacing of the story keeps you racing along with it, and most of all, the humanity, humor, gentle wisdom, and good-heartedness are touching and inspiring. You will definitely want to know more about what happens to these delightful characters and will want to read the sequel Pigs in Heaven.” Pat Neuman
Pigs In Heaven
"A phenomenal bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction, Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees." Harper Collins
New York Times Book Review
"Possessed of an extravagantly gifted narrative voice, Kingsolver blends a fierce and abiding moral vision with benevolent concise humor. Her medicine is meant for the head, the heart and the soul." Karen Karbo
