The National Book Foundation, organizer of the National Book Awards, announced that it Barbara Kingsolver with the 2024 Medal for Outstanding Contributions to American Literature (DCAL), which is at the 75th^th National Book Awards ceremony and benefit dinner on Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Kingsolver’s extensive body of work includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, investigative journalism, and science writing. Her most recent novel, Demon Copperheadwon the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was selected by the Oprah Book Club. Kingsolver will receive the DCAL Medal from Sam StoloffPresident and Director of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

“Barbara Kingsolver’s extraordinary writing and authenticity have inspired generations of writers and readers across all genres,” said David Steinberger, executive chairman of the National Book Foundation. “Kingsolver’s books – which have been translated into dozens of languages ​​- have had an enormous impact on the national and global literary landscape, and we are honored to present her with this lifetime achievement award at the awards’ 75th ceremony.^th Anniversary of the National Book Awards.”

Kingsolver, winner of the 2000 National Humanities Medal, is the author of nine novels, including The bean trees, Animal dreams, Pigs in Heaven, The Poison Wood Bible, Lost Summer, The Lacuna, Flight behavior, UnprotectedAnd Demon Copperhead; the children’s book, Coyote’s wild homeco-authored with Lily Kingsolver; the short story collection Hometown; the poetry collections Another America (Otra America) And How to fly (in ten thousand easy lessons); the essay collections Flood in Tucson And Small miracle; and the non-fiction books Last Stand: America’s Untouched Landswith photographer Annie Griffiths Belt, Holding the line: Women in the great miners’ strike in ArizonaAnd Animal, Vegetable, 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 body of work. She is the only author to have won the British Women’s Prize for Fiction twice, in 2023 for Demon Copperhead and in 2010 for The Lacuna. Kingsolver was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.

“Barbara Kingsolver’s writing spans the personal and the political, exploring complex issues of social justice, celebrating the natural world, and exploring progressive social change with care and rigor,” said Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation. “For Kingsolver, writing is a tool for civic engagement – a way to bring to light some of the most complicated environmental and social injustices of our time, and an art form through which she can share stories of her beloved Appalachia with the world. We have all benefited from her brilliance, and it is a gift to recognize her remarkable literary achievements with the 2024 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Literature.”

Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1955, grew up in rural Kentucky, and currently lives in southwest Virginia. She is a biologist by training, earning 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 was an editor for Best American Short Stories 2001 and has contributed to more than fifty literary anthologies over the course of her career. In 2000, she founded the Bellwether Prize, now known as the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a prize given every two years to an unpublished manuscript by a debut novelist. Kingsolver and her family live on a farm in the southern Appalachians.

Kingsolver is the 37th.^th Recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Literature, established in 1988 to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Past winners 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, jurors, and other writers and literary experts from across the country. Final selections are made by the National Book Foundation’s board of directors. Recipients of the foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Literature receive $10,000 and a solid brass medal, which is presented at the National Book Awards.

The 75^th The National Book Awards will be held on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The in-person ceremony and benefit dinner, which will be streamed live to readers everywhere, will present the foundation’s two lifetime achievement awards, as well as the winners of the 2024 National Book Awards in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young adult literature. For more information on the 75^th The National Book Awards ceremony and benefit dinner, and to register for the broadcast, can be found at nationalbook.org/awards.

About Barbara Kingsolver:

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestsellers, including the novels Unprotected, The bean treesAnd The Poison Wood Bibleas well as volumes of poetry, essays, creative non-fiction and Coyote’s wild homea children’s book she co-wrote with Lily Kingsolver. She also worked with family members on the influential AAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s works have been translated into more than thirty languages ​​and have gained a loyal 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 Demon Copperheadand the National Humanities Medal. She lives with her husband on a farm in the southern Appalachians.

About Sam Stoloff

Sam Stoloff is president and principal of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, founded by Frances Goldin in 1977. Sam joined the agency in 1997 after completing an MFA in poetry and a doctorate in American cultural history at Cornell University. He serves on the board of the Association of American Literary Agents.