Barbara Kingsolver

Across eight, clear-eyed novels, Barbara Kingsolver has fused grand and sometimes controversial themes with the gift of a true storyteller. An ecologist and biologist by training, Kingsolver shifted into fiction in 1988 and within a decade produced the masterful The Poisonwood Bible, a novel echoing her own year-long experience of living in the Congo.

Every book since seems to draw deeper on our complex relationships with our environment, notably the Appalachia-set Prodigal Summer, published in 2000, and the stunning Flight Behaviour of 2012, a story describing the subtle but real impact of climate change in rural Tennessee. A frequent name on awards shortlists, Kingsolver’s novel The Lacuna won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women's Prize for Fiction), whilst Demon Copperhead – her inspired reimagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield – scooped both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2023.