Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) is an American novelist, essayist, poet, and activist focusing on social justice, feminism, biodiversity, and the relationship of humans to their environment.
Born in Annapolis, Maryland, Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky. She studied biology at DePauw University, traveled and worked in Europe before returning to America, and then attended graduate school at the University of Arizona.
Kingsolver’s best-known novels including The Bean Trees (1988,) With the Poisonwood Bible (1999,) Prodigal Summer (2001,) The Lacuna (2009,) Flight Behavior (2012,) and Unsheltered (2018) concern the tenacity of people living in inhospitable environments.
Kingsolver’s poetry collection Another America / Otra America (1991) brings to light the struggles of impoverished women against sexual and political abuse, war, and death. Her essay collections include High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (1995,) Small Wonder (2002,) and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007)—the latter discusses the environmental consequences of human consumption and her family’s “locavores” experiment with consuming decision food produced locally.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Barbara Kingsolver
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Memory
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Self-Discovery
Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Betrayal
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Memory
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Self-Discovery
What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Perseverance
The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of a dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Discovery, Friendship
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Topics: Hope
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