Born in 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland, King­solver grew up in rural Kentucky. She began writ­ing as a young child, but chose to study biology in college at DePauw University. In her twenties she moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she eventually earned a graduate degree in ecology at the Univer­sity of Arizona. Following graduate school, King­solver turned back to her life-long love-writing and began writing nonfiction as a technical writer in a scientific program at the university. By the mid-1980s she was writing and publishing short fiction. Her contact in Arizona with people from Latin America, particularly refugees, influenced Kingsolver's choice of subject matter when she turned to fiction. Published in 1988, The Bean Trees was her first novel.

Best known as a novelist, Kingsolver also writes poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction. She be­lieves that fiction can be...