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.
Nominations for the medal, which includes a $10,000 cash prize, are made by former National Book Award winners, finalists, judges and other members of the literary community. Kingsolver will be honored during a Nov. 20 dinner ceremony in Manhattan, when winners in five competitive categories will be announced.
“I feel like I’ve been on this steady course, and it’s a remarkable and wonderful feeling to be appreciated and honored this way by my peers,” Kingsolver said. “It’s not someone outside the field. It’s the people who see literature as our livelihood and our spiritual anchor. And that means the world to me.”
At the ceremony, the Book Foundation will also present a lifetime achievement medal to activist-publisher W. Paul Coates for “outstanding service” to the American Literary Community. He will be introduced by his son, the author-journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself a National Book Award winner. Kingsolver will receive her award from her agent, Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin agency, whose eponymous founder was like a “mother to both Sam and me, so it felt perfect to me that we should stand together on this special occasion,” she said.
Kingsolver is being celebrated at a time when her career has never been stronger; her most recent novel, “Demon Copperhead,” was her most successful yet. A retelling of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” the young narrator a boy from Appalachia, “Demon Copperhead” was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 and sold so well for so long as a hardcover that only this fall is it coming out in a paperback edition.
Kingsolver has received numerous other awards, including a National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction — twice. She even established her own award, the Bellwether Prize for Social Change, which has cited books by Lisa Ko and Gayle Brandeis among others.
“Barbara Kingsolver’s writing embraces the personal and the political, examining complex issues of social justice, exalting the natural world, and exploring progressive social change with care and specificity,” Foundation Executive Director Ruth Dickey said in a statement. “For Kingsolver, writing is a tool for community activism — a way of shining a light on some of the most intricate 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."
Kingsolver is a native of Annapolis, Maryland, who has lived everywhere from the Republic of Congo to Tucson, Arizona, among other places. But she identifies most strongly with Appalachia, where she spent much of her childhood and has lived for the past 20 years, on a farm in southwest Virginia with her husband, Steven Hopp. Kingsolver majored in the sciences at DePauw University and the University of Arizona, worked as a freelance journalist in Arizona after graduating and unofficially launched her literary career when she won a local story writing contest.
Over the past generation, Kingsolver has seen changes she believes enabled voices like hers to be heard. When she started out, she says, the anti-Communist blacklists of the 1950 and 60s had still left the artistic landscape “scarred,” reluctant to take on issues beyond families and relationships. But more recently she has welcomed what she calls “green sprigs of grass,” writers such as Jesmyn Ward and Colson Whitehead who take on race, or the environmental fiction of Richard Powers. Her own work demonstrates that you can raise larger questions and sustain a mass readership.
“In another part of my life, I write op-ed pieces, I write letters to the editor of my local paper, I go to school board meetings. I know how to do that,” she says. “But that isn’t literature. Literature is not telling a reader what to think. There’s a modicum of condescension in any didactic work that you do. I leave that at the door to my writing. I never condescend to my readers. I never assume to know something they don’t.”
As a bestselling author, she has the rare luck to tour nationwide for her books and meet at least some of her fans — those, she notes, who are “at liberty to come to a reading,” often in urban settings. Kingsolver thinks of readers she wouldn't expect to turn up. She receives letters from Africa, from prison, from people who grew up in foster care.
“They all know things that I don't know,” she says. “I go into this as I would go into a conversation with a friend. I say, ‘Here’s something that troubles me. I wonder if it troubles you. Let's take a walk. I'm going to give you a story. I'm going to give you a reason to turn the page while we take this walk.'"
“I'm writing for anyone who wants to take that walk with me."
This story corrects the spelling of the literary agency Frances Goldin.
FILE - Barbara Kingsolver appears at the White House for the State Dinner for Kenya's President William Ruto and Kenya's first lady Rachel Ruto, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is safe following what the FBI says "appears to be an attempted assassination” while playing golf two months after another attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Local authorities said the U.S. Secret Service agents protecting Trump fired at a man pointing an AK-style rifle with a scope as Trump was playing on one of his Florida golf courses in West Palm Beach.
Here are five things to know about what happened Sunday to the Republican presidential nominee.
Law enforcement officials said the man who pointed the rifle and was arrested is Ryan Wesley Routh. The officials identified the suspect to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Records show Routh, 58, lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving in 2018 to Kaaawa, Hawaii, where he and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.
Routh frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion. In June 2020, he made a post on X directed at then-President Trump to say he would win reelection if he issued an executive order for the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct. That year, he also posted in support of the Democratic presidential campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has since left the party and endorsed Trump.
However, in recent years, his posts suggest he soured on Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In July, following the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, Routh urged Biden and Harris to visit those wounded in the shooting at the hospital and to attend the funeral of a former fire chief killed at the rally.
Voter records show he registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012, most recently voting in person during the state’s Democratic Party primary in March 2024. Federal campaign finance records show Routh made 19 small political donations totaling $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.
Records show that while living in Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. He was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.
The records do not provide details about the case. But a News & Record story from 2002 says a man with the same name was arrested after a three-hour standoff with police. The story says he was pulled over during a traffic stop, put his hand on a gun and barricaded himself inside a roofing business. He owned the roofing company, according to state incorporation filings.
Local authorities said the gunman was about 400 yards to 500 yards away from Trump and hiding in shrubbery while the former president was playing a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
Ric Bradshaw, sheriff of Palm Beach County, said that when people get into the shrubbery around the course, “they’re pretty much out of sight.” Bradshaw said the entire golf course would have been lined with law enforcement if Trump were the sitting president, but because he’s not, “security is limited to the areas the Secret Service deems possible.”
Trump’s protective detail has been higher than some of his peers because of his high visibility and his campaign to seek the White House again. His security was bolstered days before the July assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because of a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, U.S. officials said.
In an email to supporters, Trump said: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!”
His running mate, JD Vance, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said they spoke with Trump after the incident, and both said he was in “good spirits.” Trump also checked in with several Fox News hosts.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close friend of the former president's, said on air that he spoke with Trump and his golf partner, Steve Witkoff, afterward. They told Hannity they had been on the fifth hole when they heard a “pop pop, pop pop.” Within seconds, he said Witkoff recounted, Secret Service agents “pounced on” Trump and “covered him” to protect him.
Moments later, Witkoff said, a “fast cart” with steel reinforcement and other protection was able to whisk Trump away.
Hannity said Trump’s reaction after this happened — and when it was clear that everyone, including Witkoff, was safe — was to quip that he was sad he hadn’t been able to finish the hole since he “was even and had a birdie putt.”
Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in the presidential election, posted on X that she had been briefed on the reports of gunshots fired.
“I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”
The White House said President Joe Biden and Harris would be kept updated on the investigation. The White House added it was “relieved” to know Trump is safe.
Trump has not announced any changes to his schedule and is set to speak live on X on Monday night from his Mar-a-Lago resort to launch his sons’ crypto platform.
Meanwhile, the leaders of a congressional bipartisan task force investigating the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump said they have requested a briefing by the Secret Service.
“We are thankful that the former President was not harmed, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms,” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., said in a statement. They said the task force will share updates.
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat who is part of the task force, said he “will seek answers about what happened today and then.”
Ryan Wesley Routh holds up a banner during a rally in central Kyiv, Ukraine on Saturday April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)
Photos that show an AK-47 rifle, a backpack and a Go-Pro camera on a fence outside Trump International Golf Club taken after an apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, are displayed during a news conference at the Palm Beach County Main Library, Sunday. Sept. 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Stephany Matat)
This photo provided by the Martin County Sheriff's Office shows Sheriff's vehicles surrounding an SUV on the northbound I-95 in Martin County on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (Martin County Sheriff's Office via AP)
