Bellwether winner Lisa Ko’s The Leavers moves on to finalist of National Book Award

Lisa Ko’s powerful debut has earned a well-deserved spot on the National Book Award’s Shortlist for Fiction. The Leavers is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver, for a novel that addresses issues of social justice. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It’s a […]

Kingsolver among essayists featured in anthology titled Letters to a Young Farmer

Barbara Kingsolver has contributed the lead essay for Letters to a Young Farmer, an anthology that compiles insight from some of the most influential farmers, writers, and leaders in the local food movement. According to The Stones Barn Center, which edited and released the book, the United States is on the cusp of the largest retirement of […]

2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize winner announced

Lisa Ko of Brooklyn has claimed the 2016 PEN / Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for her novel The Leavers, which will be published by Algonquin Books in 2017. The novel follows a 10-year-old boy after his Chinese-American immigrant mother leaves for work one morning and doesn’t come back. Soon, her son Deming finds himself […]

Award-winning director ‘surprise’ guest at Kingsolver Earth Day event

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Barbara Kingsolver, speaking at the Paramount Theater April 22, called special guest Nicole Kassell to the stage during the program, to discuss their collaboration in bringing one of Kingsolver’s novels to film. Kassell is an award-winning television and film director whose stunning first feature film “The Woodsman” premiered at the 2004 Sundance […]

Vigil for Ilham Tohti follows presentation of Bellwether award

Barbara Kingsolver joined hundreds who gathered in support of Ilham Tohti, the Uyghur writer and scholar recently sentenced to life in prison in China on unfounded charges of separatism. The candlelight vigil in New York City Sept. 29 followed the 2014 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony, where Kingsolver had presented this year’s Bellwether Prize to Ron […]

Berea College convocation will feature Kingsolver’s ‘Novel Perspective’

Barbara Kingsolver will take a Berea College stage November 6, alongside best-selling author Silas House, who is also the college’s National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Appalachian Studies. The two will be paired for the Berea, Ky., college’s convocation, in a presentation titled “Writing and Roots: Barbara Kingsolver’s Novel Perspective, a Public Conversation with […]