High Tide in Tucson

Barbara Kingsolver was born in Maryland in 1955 and spent most of her childhood in the small town of Carlisle, Kentucky, apart from a short stint in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where her parents were aid workers. She attended DePauw University in Indiana, majoring in biology. Throughout her adult life, Kingsolver held a wide range of jobs, from archaeologist, to artist model, to scientist. She always enjoyed writing and transitioned to a full time writing career in the mid-1980s, publishing her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988. Since then she has published many novels, articles, and nonfiction works. Her most famous novel, The Poisonwood Bible (1998), is about the daughters of a missionary family in the Congo. In addition, Kingsolver has published in a number of scientific journals on topics like desert plants.

Kingsolver has received numerous awards for her writing. She received the National Humanities Medal in 2000; The Poisonwood Bible won the National Book Prize in South Africa and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize; and she has also won the James Beard Award for a book about local eating and the Edward Abbey Eco Fiction Award. In 2000, Kingsolver established her own literary prize, the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, to support writers who strive for positive social change.

Kingsolver’s works usually reflect her environmentalist mindset, her commitment to social justice, and her progressive political opinions. Her characters are often independent women, and, along with tackling larger themes, her books explore these characters’ emotions and personal developments through challenging situations. She often sets her novels within real-world historical events and explores how these events influence her characters.