Barbara Kingsolver: ‘What does love feel like? At 16, breaking the speed limit. Years later, a warm bath’

The author on the FBI tapping her phone, teaching herself to read aged three, and why she knits in meetings

Born in Maryland, in the US, Barbara Kingsolver, 71, won a music scholarship to DePauw University in Indiana. She became a journalist and published her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988. Her award-winning books include The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead, which was published in 2022 and won the Pulitzer, the James Tait Black prize and the Women’s prize for fiction. In 2025, she founded the Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence in Lee County, Virginia, where the novel is set. Her latest novel is Partita. She lives in Virginia with her second husband and has two children.

When were you happiest?

Right after the births of my children. Those hormones are strong medicine: they erase all memory of recent gruelling events and crown you goddess, author of divine creation.

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