Barbara Kingsolver In Conversation With Patricia Holt

Barbara Kingsolver is the award-winning author of The Bean Trees, Homeland, The Poisonwood Bible, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver often uses her fiction writing as platform for political activism. Her childhood - spent in Kentucky and parts of Africa, where her father practiced medicine - informs the themes of social justice, cultural differences and family struggles. The Poisonwood Bible relates the tumultuous story of the Price family, American missionaries in the Belgian Congo during political turmoil of the 1950s and 60s. The five women of the Price family narrate the story of personal adversity, set against the backdrop of religious, political and cultural strife. Kingsolver's latest novel, The Lacuna, will be published this fall. Like The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna tells a multi-generational story, this one set before and during World War II. Her protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, grows up in Mexico, but his travels crisscross the U.S. Mexican border taking him from military school in Virginia, the household of the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the brink of World War II. In The Lacuna, Kingsolver continues to investigate questions of identity, memory and the power of language to change the course of an individual and the world.
Patricia Holt was Book Editor and Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle for sixteen years. Her blog - "Holt Uncensored" - covers books, authors, the publishing industry, and all things literary. Pat Holt is the founder of the Bay Area Reviewers Association and served a term as the Vice President of the National Book Critics Circle during her time on the board.