“Demon Copperhead” author Barbara Kingsolver receives National Book Award for her lifetime achievement

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Kingsolver, This year's recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement remembers well the years when she could not imagine ever receiving such an honor.

“I just felt this constant skepticism, not from readers but from critics and gatekeepers. There were two reasons for that,” Kingsolver, 69, said in a recent phone interview. “First, because I was a country writer who lived in a rural area. I'm not a New Yorker. I don't write about urban things, so I've always been kind of an outsider. Second, I'm a woman, and 30 years ago that was certainly a disadvantage for the writer.”

On Friday, the National Book Foundation announced that Kingsolver was the 37th winner of its medal for Outstanding Contribution to American Literature (DCAL)which previously Tony Morrison,Philip Roth And Joan Didion among others. Kingsolver's novels, including “The Bean Trees,” “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Animal Trees,” have sold millions of copies and touch on social issues from immigration and drug abuse to the environment and income inequality.

Nominations for the medal, which carries a $10,000 prize, are made by past National Book Award winners, finalists, judges and other members of the literary community. Kingsolver will be honored during a dinner ceremony in Manhattan on Nov. 20, where winners in five competition categories will be announced.

“I feel like I'm on this stable trajectory, and it's a remarkable and wonderful feeling to be valued and honored by my peers in this way,” Kingsolver said. “It's not about anyone outside the field. It's about the people who see literature as our livelihood and our spiritual anchor. And that means the world to me.”

At the ceremony, the Book Foundation will also present a lifetime achievement medal to activist and publisher W. Paul Coates for “outstanding service” to the American literary community. He will be introduced by his son, author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself a National Book Award winner. Kingsolver will accept her award from her agent, Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin agency, whose eponymous founder was like a “mother to Sam and me, so it felt perfect to me that we should stand together on this special occasion,” she said.

Kingsolver is being celebrated at a time when her career has never been more successful; her latest novel, “Demon Copperhead,” was her most successful to date. “Demon Copperhead” is a retelling of Charles Dickens' “David Copperfield,” and the young narrator is a boy from Appalachia. was supported by Oprah Winfrey, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize and sold so well in hardcover for so long that it will not be published in paperback until this fall.

Kingsolver has received numerous other awards, including a National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Women's Prize for Fiction—twice. She even created her own award, the Bellwether Prize for Social Change, which recognizes books by Lisa Ko and Gayle Brandeis, among others.

“Barbara Kingsolver's writings span the personal and the political, examining complex social justice issues, celebrating nature, and exploring progressive social change with care and rigor,” said Ruth Dickey, the foundation's executive director, in a statement. “For Kingsolver, writing is a tool for civic engagement – a way to bring to light some of the most complicated environmental and social injustices of our time, and an art form through which she can share stories of her beloved Appalachia with the world. We have all benefited from her brilliance.”

A native of Annapolis, Maryland, Kingsolver has lived everywhere from the Republic of Congo to Tucson, Arizona, to name a few, but she identifies most strongly with the Appalachian Mountains, where she spent much of her childhood and has lived on a farm in southwest Virginia with her husband, Steven Hopp, for 20 years. Kingsolver studied science at DePauw University and the University of Arizona, worked as a freelance journalist in Arizona after graduating, and unofficially launched her literary career when she won a local story-writing contest.

Kingsolver has seen changes in the last generation that she says have allowed voices like hers to be heard. When she started, she says, the anti-communist blacklists of the 1950s and '60s had still “scarred” the artistic landscape, making it reluctant to tackle issues beyond family and relationships. But more recently, she has welcomed what she calls “green grass,” authors like Jesmyn Ward and Colson Whitehead who tackle racial issues, or the environmental novels of Richard Powers. Her own work shows that you can raise bigger questions and gain a wide readership.

“In another part of my life, I write opinion pieces, I write letters to the editor of my local newspaper, I go to school board meetings. I know how to do that,” she says. “But that's not literature. Literature doesn't tell a reader what to think. Any didactic work you do involves a minimum of condescension. I leave that at the door of my writing. I never condescend to my readers. I never assume I know something they don't know.”

As a bestselling author, she has the rare fortune of being able to tour her books nationally and meet at least some of her fans – those who, she notes, “have the freedom to come to a reading,” often in urban areas. Kingsolver thinks of readers she never expected to show up. She receives letters from Africa, from prison, from people who grew up in foster care.

“They all know things I don't know,” she says. “I approach this like I would start a conversation with a friend. I say, 'Here's something that's bothering me. I wonder if it's bothering you. Let's take a walk. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to give you a reason to turn the page as we take this walk.'”

“I write for anyone who wants to take this journey with me.”

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This story corrects spelling by the literary agency Frances Goldin.