National Book Foundation to Present Lifetime Achievement Award to Barbara Kingsolver

The National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, has announced that it will award Barbara Kingsolver with the 2024 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL), which will be presented at the 75^th National Book Awards Ceremony and Charity Dinner on Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Kingsolver’s extensive body of work includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, investigative journalism, and science writing. His most recent novel, Copperhead Demonwon the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was named an Oprah Book Club selection. Kingsolver will receive the DCAL Medal by Sam StoloffPresident and Director of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

“Barbara Kingsolver’s exceptional writing and authenticity, spanning all literary genres, on and off the page, have inspired generations of writers and readers,” said David Steinberger, chairman of the National Book Foundation’s board of trustees. “Kingsolver’s books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have had a profound impact on the national and global literary landscape, and we are deeply honored to present her with this Lifetime Achievement Award at the 75th National Book Foundation Awards.”^th anniversary of the National Book Awards.

A recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2000, Kingsolver is the author of nine novels, including Bean trees, Animal dreams, Pigs in Paradise, The Poison Bible, Prodigal summer, The gap, Flight behavior, HomelessAnd Copperhead Demon; the children’s book, The Coyote’s Wild Houseco-written with Lily Kingsolver; the short story collection Country; poetry collections Another America (Otra America) And How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons); essay collections High Tide in Tucson And Little wonder; and non-fiction works Last Stand: America’s Wildernesswith photographer Annie Griffiths Belt, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine StrikeAnd Animal, Plant, Miracle: A Year of Food Lifeco-written with Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver and Lily Hopp Kingsolver.

Kingsolver has been honored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the James Beard Foundation, and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, among others. In 2011, she received the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, formerly known as the Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her lifetime achievement. She is the only author to have won the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction twice, in 2023 for Copperhead Demon and in 2010 for The gapKingsolver was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.

“Barbara Kingsolver’s writing embraces the personal and the political, examines complex issues of social justice, exalts the natural world, and explores progressive social change with care and specificity,” said Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation. “For Kingsolver, writing is a tool of community activism, a way to shine a light on some of the most complex environmental and social injustices of our time, and an art form through which she can share with the world the stories of her beloved Appalachia. We have all benefited from her genius, and it is a gift to celebrate her remarkable literary achievements with the 2024 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.”

Born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1955, Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and currently resides in southwest Virginia. A biologist by training, she earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from DePauw University and a master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona. Kingsolver has served as editor-in-chief of Best American Short Stories 2001 She has contributed to more than fifty literary anthologies over the course of her career. In 2000, she established the Bellwether Prize, now known as the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a prize awarded every two years to an unpublished manuscript by a first-time novelist. Kingsolver and her family live on a farm in southern Appalachia.

Kingsolver is the 37^th Recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, established in 1988 to recognize lifetime literary achievement. Past recipients include Walter Mosley, Edmund White, Isabel Allende, Robert A. Caro, John Ashbery, Ursula K. Le Guin, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, Karen Tei Yamashita, Art Spiegelman, and, most recently, Rita Dove. Nominations for the DCAL Medal are made by past National Book Award winners, finalists, judges, and other writers and literary professionals from across the country. Final selection is made by the National Book Foundation Board of Trustees. Recipients of the Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters receive $10,000 and a solid brass medal, presented at the National Book Awards.

The 75^th The National Book Awards will take place on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The in-person ceremony and charity dinner, which will be livestreamed to readers around the world, will feature the presentation of the Foundation’s two Lifetime Achievement Awards and the 2024 National Book Awards winners in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. For more information on the 75th edition, visit:^th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner and to register for the broadcast, please visit nationalbook.org/awards.

About Barbara Kingsolver:

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Homeless, Bean treesAnd The Poison Bibleas well as books of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction and The Coyote’s Wild Housea children’s book co-written with Lily Kingsolver. She also collaborated with family members on the influential AAnimal, vegetable, miracle: a year of food lifeKingsolver’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages ​​and has gained a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received numerous awards, including the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, Copperhead Demonand the National Humanities Medal. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.

About Sam Stoloff

Sam Stoloff Sam is the President and CEO of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, founded by Frances Goldin in 1977. Sam joined the Agency in 1997, after earning an MFA in poetry and a PhD in American cultural history, both from Cornell University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of American Literary Agents.

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Barbara Kingsolver. (Photo credit: Evan Kafka)