Barbara Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is an American novelist, essayist and poet. He grew up in rural Kentucky and stayed for a while in Congo in his childhood. Kingsolver earned a degree in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before he began writing novels. His famous works are the The Poisonwood Bible , the story of a family of missionaries in the Congo, and Animals, Vegetables, Miracles , a non-fictional story about his family's attempts to eat local.
His work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity and the interaction between people and their communities and the environment. Each of his books published since 1993 has been listed on the Best Seller New York Times. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Lincoln C. Holbrooke Integrated Memories Awards 2011, the British Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna , and the National Humanities Medal. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and Pulitzer Prize.
In 2000, Kingsolver founded the Bellwether Prize to support "social change literature".
Video Barbara Kingsolver
Personal life
Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1955 and grew up in Carlisle, Kentucky. When Kingsolver was seven years old, his father, a doctor, took the family to LÃÆ' Â © opoldville, Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). His parents work in a community health capacity, and his family lives without electricity or running water.
After graduating from high school, Kingsolver studied at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, on a music scholarship, learning classical piano. Eventually, however, he changed his majors to biology when he realized that "classical pianists compete for six job vacancies a year, and the rest [they] can play 'Blue Moon' in the hotel lobby". He was involved in activism on his campus, and took part in protests against the Vietnam war. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Science in 1977, and moved to France for a year before settling in Tucson, Arizona, where he lived for much of the following two decades. In 1980, he enrolled in graduate school at the University of Arizona, where he obtained a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.
Kingsolver began his full-time writing career in the mid-1980s as a science writer for the university, leading eventually to some freelance feature writing, including many cover stories for the local alternative weekly, Weekly Tucson. He started his career in fiction writing after winning a short story contest in a local Phoenix newspaper. In 1985, he married Joseph Hoffmann; their daughter Camille was born in 1987.
He moved with his daughter to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for a year during the first Gulf war, largely out of frustration over American military engagement. After returning to the United States in 1992, she separated from her husband.
In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Letters from his alma mater, DePauw University. That same year, she married Steven Hopp, a bird expert, and their daughter, Lily, born in 1996. In 2004, Kingsolver moved with her family to a ranch in Washington County, Virginia, where they are currently located. In 2008, he received the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Duke University, where he delivered his opening speech entitled "How to be Hopeful".
In the late 1990s, he was a founding member of Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band composed of published authors. Other band members include Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry and Stephen King, and they play for a week throughout the year. Kingsolver plays the keyboard, but is no longer an active member of the band.
In a 2010 interview with The Guardian , Kingsolver said, "I never wanted to be famous, and still not, [...] the universe rewarded me with what I feared the most". He said he created his own website just to compete with most fake people, "as a defense to protect my family from misinformation Wikipedia hates the void.If you do not define yourself, it will be done for you in a colorful way.".
Local eating experiment
Beginning in April 2005, he and his family spent a year making every effort to eat locally produced food as possible. Living on their farm in rural Virginia, they grow a lot of their own food, and get most of the rest from their neighbors and other local farmers. Kingsolver, her husband and her eldest daughter recorded their experiences that year in the book Animals, Vegetables, Miracles . Although exceptions are made for locally unavailable basic ingredients, such as coffee and olive oil, families grow vegetables, raise cattle, make cheese and store lots of their crops.
Maps Barbara Kingsolver
Writing career
The first novel Kingsolver, The Bean Trees , was published in 1988, and tells the story of a young woman who left Kentucky to Arizona, adopting an abandoned child along the way; she writes it at night during pregnancy with her first child and struggles with insomnia. The next work of fiction, published in 1990, is Homeland and Other Stories , a collection of short stories on various topics exploring themes from the evolution of cultural land and ancestors to marriage struggles.
Novel Animal Dreams was also published in 1990, followed by Pigs in Heaven , a sequel to The Bean Trees , in 1993. The Poisonwood Bible , published in 1998, is one of his most famous works; this tells the life of the wife and daughter of a Baptist missionary on a Christian mission in Africa. Although the arrangement of this novel is somewhat similar to that of Kingsolver's own childhood to the Republic of Congo at that time, the novel is not autobiographical. The next novel, published in 2000, is Prodigal Summer , located in southern Appalachia. The Lacuna was published in 2009; His latest novel, titled Flight Behavior , was published in 2012. It explores environmental themes and highlights the potential effects of global warming on the king's butterfly.
Kingsolver is also an authorized poet and essayist. Two of his essay collections, High Tide in Tucson (1995) and Small Wonder (2003), have been published, and an anthology of his poems was published in 1998 under the title Another America . His essay "Where to Begin" appears in anthology. Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting (2013), published by W. W. Norton & amp; Company. The prose poem is also accompanied by photographs by Annie Griffiths Belt in a 2002 work entitled Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands .
His non-fiction works include his 1990s publication Holding Lines: Women in the Arizona Great Mine Attack of 1983 and 2007 Animals, Vegetables, Miracles , descriptions of local eating. He has also been published as a science journalist in magazines such as Botany Ekonomi on topics such as desert plants and bioresources.
Literary styles and themes
Kingsolver has written novels in both the first and third person narrative styles, and he often uses overlapping narratives.
The writer Kingsolver is diverse, but he often writes about familiar places and situations with him; many of his stories are based on where he lives, such as Central Africa and Arizona. He has stated emphatically that his novels are not autobiographical, although there are often similarities between his life and his work. His work is often very idealistic and his writing has been referred to as a form of activism.
His character is often written around struggles for social equality, such as the difficulties faced by illegal immigrants, working poor, and single mothers. Other common themes in his work include a balance of personality with a desire to live in a community, and the interactions and conflicts between humans and the ecosystems in which they live. Kingsolver has been said to use prose and draw narratives to make historical events, such as the Congolese struggle for independence, more interesting and appealing to the average reader.
Bellwether Prize
In 2000, Kingsolver founded the Bellwether Prize for Fiction. Named for bellwether, literary prizes are intended to support writers whose unpublished work supports positive social change. The Bellwether Prize is given in even-numbered years, and includes guaranteed great publicity and a cash prize of US $ 25,000, fully funded by Kingsolver. He has stated that he wants to make literary prizes to "encourage writers, publishers, and readers to consider how fiction involves a vision of social change and human justice." In May 2011, PEN American Center announced it would take over the administration of the prize, to be known as PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.
Awards and awards
Kingsolver has received numerous awards and awards. In 2000, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by US President Bill Clinton. Her 1998 best-selling book, The Poisonwood Bible , won the South African National Book Prize, and was selected for the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award. His most famous awards include the James Beard Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edward Abbey EcoFiction Award, National Doctor Award for Social Responsibility, and the Arizona Civil Liberties Union Award. The novel, The Lacuna , won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. Every book that Kingsolver wrote since 1993's
In 2011, he was awarded the Lincoln Integrated Literature Award, Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Kingsolver was the first recipient of the newly named award to celebrate US diplomats who played instrumental roles in negotiating the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. In 2014, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Library of Virginia. This award recognizes the extraordinary and long-term contributions to literature by a Virginian. In 2018, the Virginia Library named him one of Virginia Women in History.
Criticism
Calling Kingsolver a "Calamity Writing" master at The New Republic Lee Siegel writes that he offers "a purely good appearance in lieu of honest art". He also characterized him as an "easy, funny, competent, and arrogant writer [who] has been appointed to the ranks of the greatest political novelists of our time."
Kingsolver was criticized for a Los Angeles Times opinion after the US bombing in Afghanistan was woken from the September 11 attacks. He wrote, "I feel like I'm standing in a playground where the little boys shout each other, 'He started it!' and throwing stones that continue to gouge out the other eye, another gear.I keep looking for someone's mom to come to the scene, say, "Boys! Boys! Who started it could not be a problem here. People are hurt. "One reader quotes his essay as an example of" left-sided nihilism. "Others wrote," Kingsolver seems to believe that our insufficient numbers died in New York to ensure our response in Afghanistan. "Other readers, however, "sentiments of love." With some notes, he was "reproached as a traitor," but rose from these accusations and wrote about them.
Work
Fiction
- The Bean Trees , 1988, 1st English edition 1989, Limited edition (200) 1992
- Homeland and Other Stories , 1989
- Animal Dream , 1990
- Pig in Heaven , 1993
- The Poisonwood Bible , 1998
- Prodigal Summer , 2000
- The Lacuna , 2009
- Flight Behavior , 2012
- Not Swing , 2018
Essays
- Little Miracle: Essay , 2002
- High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never , 1995, also: Limited edition (150) 1995
Poems
- other Americans , 1992
Nonfiction
- Holding Lines: Women in the 1983 Arizona Mine Attack , 1989
- Last Stand: American Virgin Lands , 2002 (with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt)
- Animals, Vegetables, Wonders: One Year of Food Life 2007, (with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver)
References
External links
- Official website
- The author page at HarperCollins
- The official page "Animals, Vegetables, Miracles"
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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