When Kingsolver was seven years old, her father, a physician, took the family to the former Republic of Congo in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1955 and grew up in Carlisle in rural Kentucky.

In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support 'literature of social change.' She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna and the National Humanities Medal. Each of her books published since 1993 have been on The New York Times Best Seller list. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet.

Barbara kingsolver the poisonwood