Barbara Kingsolver
Writers

Barbara Kingsolver Net Worth

Barbara Kingsolver is an acclaimed American novelist, poet, social activist and author of the best-selling novel ‘The Poisonwood Bible’. She has been writing since childhood and kept her journal from the age of eight. After receiving a fairly average education, she pursued post-graduation in science but also continued her passion of writing with short stories and essays. She won a short story contest in a local Phoenix newspaper and since then has written many fictional masterpieces, essays, short stories, and poems. Her books have garnered a lot of commercial and critical success due to her dedication to causes she cares about, including social justice and environmentalism. Her novels have been translated into two dozen languages and she has a cult following among the readers over the years.
Barbara Kingsolver is a member of Writers

Age, Biography and Wiki

Who is it? Novelist, Poet, Essayist
Birth Day April 08, 1955
Birth Place Annapolis, Maryland, United States, United States
Age 68 YEARS OLD
Birth Sign Taurus
Occupation Novelist, poet, essayist
Period 1988–present
Genre Historical fiction
Subject Social justice, feminism, environmentalism
Notable works The Poisonwood Bible Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Flight Behavior
Spouse Joseph Hoffmann (1985–1992) Steven Hopp (1994–present)
Children Camille Lily

💰 Net worth: $9 Million (2024)

Barbara Kingsolver, a renowned novelist, poet, and essayist from the United States, has amassed an impressive net worth of $9 million, estimated for 2024. Kingsolver's remarkable talent and unique storytelling abilities have captivated readers worldwide. Her literary works often explore compelling themes such as social justice, environmentalism, and feminist perspectives. With numerous bestselling novels to her name, including "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Flight Behavior," Kingsolver's contribution to contemporary literature remains highly regarded. Her profound impact on readers and her continuous dedication to writing have undoubtedly led to her financial success.

Biography/Timeline

1955

Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1955 and grew up in Carlisle, Kentucky. When Kingsolver was seven years old, her father, a physician, took the family to Léopoldville, Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Her parents worked in a public health capacity, and the family lived without electricity or running water.

1977

After graduating from high school, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. Eventually, however, she changed her major to biology when she realized that "classical Pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of [them] get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby". She was involved in activism on her campus, and took part in protests against the Vietnam war. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Science in 1977, and moved to France for a year before settling in Tucson, Arizona, where she lived for much of the next two decades. In 1980, she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Arizona, where she earned a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.

1980

Kingsolver began her full-time writing career in the mid-1980s as a science Writer for the university, which eventually led to some freelance feature writing, including many cover stories for the local alternative weekly, the Tucson Weekly. She began her career in fiction writing after winning a short story contest in a local Phoenix newspaper. In 1985, she married Joseph Hoffmann; their daughter Camille was born in 1987.

1988

Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees, was published in 1988, and told the story of a young woman who leaves Kentucky for Arizona, adopting an abandoned child along the way; she wrote it at night while pregnant with her first child and struggling with insomnia. Her next work of fiction, published in 1990, was Homeland and Other Stories, a collection of short stories on a variety of topics exploring various themes from the evolution of cultural and ancestral lands to the struggles of marriage.

1990

Her major non-fiction works include her 1990 publication Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 and 2007's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a description of eating locally. She has also been published as a science Journalist in periodicals such as Economic Botany on topics such as desert plants and bioresources.

1992

She moved with her daughter to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for a year during the first Gulf war, mostly due to frustration over America's military involvement. After returning to the US in 1992, she separated from her husband.

1993

Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Each of her books published since 1993 has been on the New York Times Best Seller list. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011, UK's Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna, and the National Humanities Medal. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

1994

In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University. In the same year, she married Steven Hopp, an ornithologist, and their daughter, Lily, was born in 1996. In 2004, Kingsolver moved with her family to a farm in Washington County, Virginia, where they currently reside. In 2008, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Duke University, where she delivered a commencement address entitled "How to be Hopeful".

1995

Kingsolver is also a published poet and Essayist. Two of her essay collections, High Tide in Tucson (1995) and Small Wonder (2003), have been published, and an anthology of her poetry was published in 1998 under the title Another America. Her essay "Where to Begin" appears in the anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting (2013), published by W. W. Norton & Company. Her prose poetry also accompanied photographs by Annie Griffiths Belt in a 2002 work titled Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands.

2000

Kingsolver has received a number of awards and honors. In 2000, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by the US President Bill Clinton. Her 1998 bestseller, The Poisonwood Bible, won the National Book Prize of South Africa, and was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award. Her most notable awards include the James Beard Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edward Abbey EcoFiction Award, the Physicians for Social Responsibility National Award, and the Arizona Civil Liberties Union Award. Her novel, The Lacuna, won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. Every book that Kingsolver has written since 1993's Pigs in Heaven has been on The New York Times Best Seller list, and her novel The Poisonwood Bible was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.

2005

Starting in April 2005, she and her family spent a year making every effort to eat food produced as locally as possible. Living on their farm in rural Virginia, they grew much of their own food, and obtained most of the rest from their neighbors and other local farmers. Kingsolver, her husband and her elder daughter chronicled their experiences that year in the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Although exceptions were made for staple ingredients which were not available locally, such as coffee and olive oil, the family grew vegetables, raised livestock, made cheese and preserved much of their harvest.

2010

In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Kingsolver says, "I never wanted to be famous, and still don't, [...] the universe rewarded me with what I dreaded most". She said she created her own website just to compete with a plethora of fake ones, "as a defence to protect my family from misinformation. Wikipedia abhors a vacuum. If you don't define yourself, it will get done for you in colourful ways".

2011

In 2011, she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Kingsolver is the first ever recipient of the newly named award to celebrate the U.S. diplomat who played an instrumental role in negotiating the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. In 2014, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Library of Virginia. The award recognizes outstanding and long-lasting contributions to literature by a Virginian. In 2018 the Library of Virginia named her one of the Virginia Women in History.

Some Barbara Kingsolver images

About the author

Lisa Scholfield

As a Senior Writer at Famous Net Worth, I spearhead an exceptional team dedicated to uncovering and sharing the stories of pioneering individuals. My passion for unearthing untold narratives drives me to delve deep into the essence of each subject, bringing forth a unique blend of factual accuracy and narrative allure. In orchestrating the editorial workflow, I am deeply involved in every step—from initial research to the final touches of publishing, ensuring each biography not only informs but also engages and inspires our readership.