Barbara Kingsolver is not only a contemporary American author of best-selling novels, nonfiction, and poetry, but also a freelance journalist and political activist. Kingsolver cares deeply about the world in which she lives and the people in it, and her writing attempts to change the world — to make the world a better place in which to live. Thus, Kingsolver writes about current social issues such as the environment, human rights, and social injustice. Her protagonists tend to be resilient, sensitive females, who are successfully surviving the typical day-to-day struggles found in America. Although Kingsolver's characters tend to find themselves facing traumatic dilemmas, Kingsolver is able to interject humor, which lightens the tone and communicate the love, hope, and strength that is evident in the lives of people from all cultures and walks of life. Kingsolver's personal experiences and passions, as well as her love of the southwestern United States, deeply influence her writing.
Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955, in Annapolis, Maryland, to Virginia Henry and Wendell Kingsolver, a physician. The family moved to eastern Kentucky in order to be close to family, and Kingsolver's father worked there as the only doctor in rural Nicholas County. This was a depressed county — oddly situated between the poverty of coal fields and the affluence of horse farms — and most people living there were not well off. They earned enough money to ensure their survival through tobacco farming, but were dependent on neighbors for everything else. Nicholas County did not have a swimming pool, and Kingsolver never laid eyes on so much as a tennis court until she went away to college.
