Literary News

Kingsolver Is 2014 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

The Library of Virginia will honor internationally acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver with its 2014 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the author of best-selling novels, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as a freelance journalist and political activist.

Born in 1955, Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona. Critical acclaim for her books includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, among others.

The Poisonwood Bible (1998), a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Orange Prize, won the national book award of South Africa before being named an Oprah Book Club selection. The bookwas recently listed by Amazon.com among its “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.” In 2000, Kingsolver received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007) won numerous prizes including the James Beard award. Britain’s prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction and the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction both went to The Lacuna (2009), which the Virginia judges described as “the achievement of a literary artist at the peak of her skills.” In 2011, she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work.

Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize in 1998 to promote fiction that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships. Awarded biennially to the author of a previously unpublished novel of high literary caliber that exemplifies the prize’s founding principles, the prize includes $25,000 and a publishing contract with Algonquin Books. In 2012 it became the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

During a Lila Wallace fellowship at Emory and Henry College in the 1990s, Kingsolver met her husband Steven Hopp, an environmental studies professor. Between 1996 and 2003 she divided her time between Tucson, Arizona, and a log cabin in Virginia. Since June 2004, Kingsolver and her family have lived on a farm in southwestern Virginia.

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