Barbara Kingsolver, the 71-year-old author of Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Demon Copperhead, says she felt happiest right after the births of her children. She describes the experience as driven by powerful hormones that erase memory of difficult moments beforehand.
Born in Maryland, Kingsolver won a music scholarship to DePauw University in Indiana before becoming a journalist. She published her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988. Her other award-winning books include The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna. Demon Copperhead, published in 2022, won the Pulitzer Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction.
In 2025, Kingsolver founded the Higher Ground Women's Recovery Residence in Lee County, Virginia, the setting for Demon Copperhead. Her latest novel is Partita. She lives in Virginia with her second husband and two children.