Born in 1955, Barbara Kingsolver grew up primarily in rural Kentucky. She has a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she lived in the 1980s, during the period when she wrote her first novel, The Bean Trees. Kingsolver is known for focusing on the interactions between humans and the environment, often including themes of social justice, ecological metaphor, and complex female characters. She’s the author of nine novels. Like The Bean Trees, her second novel, Animal Dreams, is set in the Arizona, and her third, Pigs in Heavens, is a sequel to The Bean Trees that continues the story of Taylor and Turtle Greer. Kingsolver’s novels typically employ multiple plotlines and characters that overlap over the course of a story. While her fiction isn’t autobiographical, she often uses places where she has lived as settings. Kingsolver frequently depicts the struggles of marginalized peoples, and her fiction advocates for ideals of social equity and racial justice.

In addition to her fiction, Kingsolver authors nonfiction works, including Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007), which documents her family’s attempt to only eat food that they grew or obtained locally for a year.