Celebrated author, journalist, and human rights and environmental activist, Barbara Kingsolver was bom in Annapolis, Maryland on April 8. 1955. but grew up in rural Kentucky. As she watched her father, a country physician, minister to the poor and working class, she began to develop a sense of social responsibility and devotion to community that would later be expressed in her writing. When she was in the second grade, her father accepted a medical position in the Congo and moved his family there. At that time, Kingsolver began her lifelong habit of writing in a journal.

During her junior year at DePauw University, where she was studying biology, she took time off to work in Europe as an archaeologist's assistant. After eventually earning a degree at DePauw, she lived for periods of time in Europe and America, supporting herself with a diverse array of job titles including typesetter...