Saturday, November 28, 2009

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling books of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction include the novels The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible. Translated into nineteen languages, her work has won a devoted worldwide readership and many awards, including the National Humanities Medal. Her latest book is The Lacuna.

From her Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:
Can you remember the first novel you read?

My father read me Oliver Twist.

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What is the strangest thing you’ve done when researching a book?

For The Poisonwood Bible I spent an afternoon in the venomous reptiles house of Cincinnati Zoo, waiting to see the inside of a green mamba’s mouth, which is sky blue.

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What book changed your life?

Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence series. I was about 16 when I read the first one. I understood for the first time that fiction is a powerful tool for making people more worldly and ...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue