Barbara (and Hugo) were recently featured in a Culture piece by Penelope Green of The New York Times, who came to visit Barbara in her home just before the release of Demon Copperhead. After release of the article, Barbara thanked Penelope: “for seeing and hearing Appalachia and getting everything right. (Hugo was also pleased, and proudly confirms that he did, indeed, smell faintly of skunk.)”
Subscribe to The New York Times in order to read the full article here, and enjoy these excerpts below:
“In ‘Demon Copperhead,’ Barbara Kingsolver reimagines ‘David Copperfield’ as a tale set in Southern Appalachia, and brings humanity and humor to a region and people who have long endured exploitation and condescension.”
“MEADOWVIEW, VA. — Most of Barbara Kingsolver’s novels begin with a question, usually involving an injustice: how to tell a story about America’s exploitation of developing countries, for example, or the effects of climate change on rural communities.
Her latest book began with the question of how to tell a story about the opioid epidemic that is ravaging Appalachia.
The answer came, she said, from a visitation by Charles Dickens. (More on that later. ‘I don’t usually talk to dead people,’ she said.) The result of the conversation, her 17th book in nearly three decades as a best-selling author, is ‘Demon Copperhead,’ out on Oct. 18, which reimagines the hero of ‘David Copperfield’ as a young man in contemporary Southern Appalachia.”
