Bestselling Novelist Barbara Kingsolver Birthed a Baby and Her First Book — At the Same Time
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10/04/2024 09:00 AM
The Pulitzer Prize winner — soon a National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award winner — recently told the story on Elin Hilderbrand's podcast
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Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver is looking back on personal and professional milestones in her life, including one unlikely combination of events!
The acclaimed author, 69, appeared on Elin Hilderbrand and Tim Ehrenberg's podcast Books, Beach, & Beyond on Oct. 1, where she spoke about the origins of her 1988 debut novel, The Bean Trees.
The Bean Trees follows Taylor Greer, a half-Cherokee Kentucky native who inherits a Native American girl called Turtle, per the book's synopsis. The two embark on a journey to begin a new life in the American West.
Kingsolver was pregnant with her first child, Camille, while she was writing the book, and said that she suffered from insomnia during that period.
"I felt like life was giving me extra hours, so I wedged my desk into a closet so I could go in there and close the door and turn the light on," Kingsolver said. "So I wrote this whole book in the closet at night … I had a hard deadline because I was gonna have a baby in March, and my daughter was very, very obliging."
"I finished it just in the nick of time," Kingsolver added. "And I thought, well, I'll send it to this agent because I have to get it out … I just put it in the mail with absolutely no expectations. I included a letter of apology. I said, 'You probably don't wanna read this. It's probably not any good.'"
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Kingsolver then went to the hospital and gave birth to her daughter. When she returned home, more good new was awaiting her.
"My answering machine was blinking, and the message said, 'Your book is going to be published," Kingsolver said, adding, "I became a mother and a novelist on the same day."
Kingsolver, who now holds accolades such as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Humanities Medal, told Hilderbrand and Ehrenberg that she was initially unsure about becoming a writer. She grew up in Kentucky and studied biology at Indiana's DePauw University before attending graduate school at the University of Arizona.
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"I was always writing since I was a little girl," the author said. "I always wrote poems and stories and kept a journal and all that, but it was very private. But at this time in college, even though I was a science major, I was writing stories and poems more seriously, and I was writing from this fake persona that I was trying to invent."
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Barbara Kingsolver in March 2024"I just understood for the first time that if I wanted to write anything good, it would have to come from a real place, the place that I really inhabit in the universe, which involves where I came from," she said.
Related: National Book Awards Announces 2024 Finalists and First-Time Honorees — See the List!
Kingsolver is the author of 18 works of fiction, including 2022's Demon Copperhead, as well as nonfiction and poetry books. She and her daughter, Lily, co-authored the 2023 children's book Coyote's Wild Home.
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On Sept. 5, it was announced that Kingsolver will be awarded the 2024 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Kingsolver will accept the award at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Nov. 20 in New York City.
"Spanning genres, Barbara Kingsolver's exceptional writing and authenticity, on and off of the page, has inspired generations of writers and readers," said National Book Foundation Chair of the Board of Directors David Steinberger in a statement.
"Kingsolver's books — which have been translated into dozens of languages — have had a vast impact on the national and global literary landscape, and it is our profound honor to present her with this lifetime achievement award at the 75th anniversary of the National Book Awards."
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