NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Kingsolver, this year’s recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement, remembers well the years she couldn’t imagine receiving such honors.
“I just felt this continuous skepticism, not from readers but from critics and the gatekeepers. It was on two counts,” Kingsolver, 69, said during a recent telephone interview. “One: Because I was a rural writer and I lived in a rural place. I’m not a New Yorker. I don’t write about city things, so that’s always sort of positioned me as an outsider. Two: I’m a woman, and, certainly 30 years ago that was a strike against the writer.”
On Friday, the National Book Foundation announced that Kingsolver was the 37th winner of its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL), which has previously been given to Toni 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 have touched upon social issues from immigration and drug abuse to the environment and income inequality.