Poured Over: Barbara Kingsolver on Demon Copperhead

Jenna Seery

“This is the place; this is the right place for me, it’s home.”

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning return to Appalachia, is the story of a young boy growing into adulthood amid the struggle and beauty of this oft-overlooked corner of America. Kingsolver joins us to talk about the truth of Appalachian culture, how journalism made her the novelist she is today, the politics of art and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.          

Featured Books (Episode):
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Dopesick by Beth Macy
Raising Lazarus by Beth Macy
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Dreamland by Sam Quinones
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Leavers by Lisa Ko
Moonrise Over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks

Full Episode Transcript

Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer, the producer and host of Poured Over and Barbara Kingsolver, of course, you know, Barbara Kingsolver, but she has also just won the Pulitzer for Demon Copperhead, which is fabulous. And we will get to this book, I promise you. But Barbara, I’m going to ask you to talk about Southern Appalachia where you live and you moved back to what in early aughts, you moved back from Tucson?

Barbara Kingsolver
Yeah, that’s right. I grew up in Kentucky, I had to do my walk about, you know, actually, like so many people growing up in really little towns, I couldn’t wait to, you know, kick the little town, dust off my heels and get out of there. I went to college in Indiana, then I really did my walkabout. I lived in Greece, in France, in the UK, in New York. And I was sort of wound up in Tucson, for no particular reason. I went there to see the West and thought that I would maybe stay a month or two and I stayed 20 years. So the whole time I was out west, I learned a lot. I really, I became a grown up there. I made wonderful friends and sort of came of age, but it never felt like home. I always wanted to get back to this place where I live. So I was so I actually started coming back halftime, started coming back in the summers in the 90s. And then finally, we made the full time move in 2004. This is the place; this is the right place for me, it’s home.

MM
I have to admit, I’m a huge fan of Animal Vegetable Miracle, as well. And I love the idea — are you still growing all of the tomatoes that no one else stocks and are you still growing sweet potatoes?

BK
I wish I could turn the camera out the window and up the hill. I just put in, this week, 40 tomato plants. And every year I mean, our kids are grown now so we don’t have the free labor. Actually, they’re always willing to help. Every year we say, well downsize next year, we won’t need such a big garden. There we go. But because we have to have, you know, the Principe Borgheses and we have to have the green zebras. And so, you know, I sort of whittled it down to this is what we have to have. And it’s 40 plants. So yeah, we still grow a really good-sized garden. And we you know, we feed ourselves, the family, the neighborhood. It’s how we, evidently it’s how we like to live.

Part of why I asked you to start with where you are and sort of the southern Appalachians, is because there’s so much love in your voice when you talk about this community. And there’s so much pride and I love how you are part of the community, and you talk about it like this is my return. And this is my home. And this is because Demon Copperheadis hard. I mean, you’re writing about the opioid crisis, but you’re doing it in a way. I mean, Demon’s voice — I read a lot of fiction, but I gotta tell you, it’s gonna be a really long time before I shake that kid’s voice. I just, he is so good. And so real, and funny and smart, and all of these things. When did you get his voice?

It kind of arrived all of a piece. But he took his time, I spent more than two years trying to figure out how to get into this because I wanted to write about this place, Appalachia. I wanted to write about the opioid epidemic, and the kids who have been orphaned by this crisis, and how that’s really changed our whole community, our schools, everything. People have ideas about addicts, and, you know, personal weakness and stuff. And they also have ideas about Appalachia, and I really wanted to get past those stereotypes. I really wanted to write the great Appalachian novel, and I didn’t know how to do it. And then I had this, I’ve told the story a lot of times I had this sort of surprising ethereal conversation with Charles Dickens while I was staying the night in his house, thinking he wasn’t there, but he was and he told me look, orphans, structural poverty, kids thrown away by society, you think this can’t be done? Give me a break. You think people won’t read it, come on, they will read it, but you let the kid tell the story. And that very night when I had the idea that I would write my own David Copperfield. His name came to me — Copperhead, I saw this red-haired kid sort of course sort of I saw him immediately as Melungeon, dark skinned green eyed red hair, somebody that, you know, you look at and look at again, you know, sort of an arresting looking tough kid, my Demon Copperhead, my David Copperfield. And he just started talking, I got him in my ear, he was really angry. I actually that night, like, you know, when I started laying it out and seeing how the kid would tell the story. And it would be the story of this kid, I understood that his voice would be that narrative engine that would get people into this difficult story, and it will get them through to the other side, it needed to be first person, just to give readers that assurance that he’s gonna make it because he’s telling you this story. I personally hate to read about children in jeopardy. If it looks to me like a kid, a child is going to die in a novel, I will actually, I can’t bear it. And I will, I will page ahead to see how it comes up. So I thought this is this is going to be a hard read, for people like me, for the tender hearts. But I want to give you that promise. This is a survivor’s tale. He’s telling you the story from the other side of it starting with, I got myself born. And all of these things happen to me, but here I am. I’m still here. So yeah, all of those things sort of came to me at once that it needed to be first person, it needed to be entirely his understanding of the world, limited to his vision, and that he needed to be just really loaded with righteous anger and a good sense of humor about himself and his situation. A lot of irony. He’s a much more angry and ironic character, than David Copperfield. Yeah, you know, times have changed, you know, David Copperfield. He’s a smart cookie. But he’s also pretty wide eyed. You know, Mommy has a new boyfriend, I hope you will be nice and nope. I have my instructions and no. So a funny thing is that initially, he was so angry, I had to dial in back, you know, in drafts, he was so mad that I realized he would be off putting, I actually, when I had written about 200 pages of the first draft, I just curiosity, I did a search to see how many F bombs demon has 300 pages, you want to take a guess?

809

It was 170. So I thought maybe I can maybe I can dial that back to just like one every three or four pages, not just his language, but his whole attitude was very, you know, very busy. So he has to be likable, you have to, you understand his anger. But you also have to start by liking him and then loving him. So that was, you know, through many drafts, I kind of manipulated you the reader into a sort of soft pedaled his anger in the beginning and then brought it in little by little as you understand his situation better. And as you understand that no adult in his life is showing up for him, you will accept that he’s seriously pissed off at all adults and at the condition of childhood, which he says is a really terrible thing to be a kid.

And we meet him when he’s nine or 10. He’s little, he’s really little when he starts telling a story and you give him this height and girth and size that makes his life more complicated because people are thinking he’s older than he is. And sort of weighing that like, of course, this kid is not going to trust anyone. Of course, this kid is saying I mean, the misogyny is its present. It is absolutely present. But he does you do give him some lifelines. I have to say, I liked his grandmother quite a lot. Betsy was great. The neighbors were lovely, you know?

And that’s, it’s a line to walk because I feel like I have this duty to represent Appalachia, represent people and my place and my culture. Because it is so unfairly treated, if it shows up at all, you know, in mainstream media, we’re just dumb hillbillies, or we are a poverty documentary. So I wanted to give, you know, truth and beauty and nuance to my culture. And to talk about these real problems that we have these things that have been done to us. But, you know, there are the addicted people and there are the, you know, the abusers. There’s the horrible stepfather and so forth, but it’s an ecosystem of characters, I wanted to show you how nobody operates in a vacuum in this place. That’s one of the truest things I can tell you about, about my people is we are, we’re people made out of community. So every kid has a mamaw. And that’s, I mean, he even talks about that when he’s little, he thinks that his neighbor, his next door neighbor’s mamaw is his mamaw, because he says, everybody gets a mamaw, right? And because, you know, his father’s dead, and his mother was a foster care orphan, he just kind of thinks is a standard issue, everybody gets a mamaw, so he adopts himself to the mamaw next door. And that is so true about this place, I can, if you were here, I would, could walk down my road with you and say, there’s the mamaw who’s raising her grandkids, and also looking after the kids next door. They’re these wonderful, sort of extended families of neighbors. And there are people like Jean Piguet, these professional people, she’s the wonder nurse, you know, there’s kind of permeable boundaries between her patients, her clientele and sort of her genuine love and care and desire to kind of look after these people, even after they leave her office. So that’s us, that’s who we are. And if a kid has one adult in their lives they can count on, it makes a world of difference. And so that was that was his salvation, he had every terrible situation, you had at least a teacher, or a mamaw, or, you know, or Jean the wonder nurse, somebody who had his best interests at heart. His problem was, he didn’t really believe he deserved very much. So he pushes these people away, in all kinds of ways as kids do. But and also, he considers himself an adult from the time he’s 11. Because he’s, he’s essentially, you know, had to look after his own mother since he, since he was old enough to find her shoes and find her keys. So yeah, that toughness that allows him to survive, also keeps people at arm’s length, but not the reader, I hope.

No, no, no, no, I have no experience of the region beyond what I’ve read in books and what I know from history. I mean, one of the things I appreciate about this book too, is the way you do not separate the history of the actual history of Appalachia from Demon’s life and when we’re talking about the mine strikes, and we’re talking about what has happened in terms of corporations coming through the region and doing really terrible things to the communities all just because they can honestly they basically can, there’s a way to make money. And I’ve lived in a couple of cities and I’m very lucky and I’m a city person. Okay, straight up, I will own it. City person. But the idea that someone like you or someone like Jean Piggott, would go back to the community and say, no, I’m part of this, I don’t want to leave that, you know, there’s a brain drain that happens in places like Appalachia, because there just aren’t resources.

I mean, employment is the thing and that was quite deliberate. Mainly the coal companies and that’s, that really sort of put a fence around this whole region, the coal companies came in, historically, bought the land, bought the city halls, bought the schools, they controlled everything, and they quite deliberately kept out all other industries, so they have this workforce. It’s very much like if you look at how imperialist governments treat their colonies in Africa, or, you know, in Asia, it’s exactly the same. It’s just the same strategy you come in, you suppress education, you make sure that there is no competing employment, and then you’ve got this labor force. That’s what has been done to us. And it’s so interesting that people don’t understand that Appalachia is like an internal colony of the US, you know, why isn’t there any employment here? You know, why does everybody have to leave? It’s not because we’re lazy and stupid, this was done to us. So, I don’t see that story told very often and so I wanted to tell it, and also give outsiders some sympathy for how this feels from the inside, effects, even like when families are getting ready to send a kid away to college. It’s a very mixed feeling, right? There’s a lot of sadness because, there’s almost a certainty that they won’t be back. So the family is losing, you know, their precious kids and Demon talks about that in no uncertain terms. His friend Angus well lost her, she’s gonna have to live in some horrible city, you know, poor her. It’s hard, if you’re not from here to understand how that, that we all have that sort of torn feeling of loyalty to home and longing for something else, which I, you know, I had growing up, I had to leave in order to understand how much I need this place. And I think you got everybody, everybody here experiences.

I just want to call out the Pulitzer citation for a second because it is a prize that is given to an American writer, preferably writing about an American topic. And I think that’s so important to raise. I mean, certainly, it’s nice to see Pulitzer Prize winner next to your name. But the idea too, that this is a story that belongs to all of us. And you know, you’re talking about shame, and you’re talking about grief, and you’re talking about hunger, I mean, the poverty, yeah, that runs through this book. And half the time this kid is so hungry, he can’t see straight and like we are a country that ostensibly is doing quite well and…

And throws away so much food.

And here’s a kid who is actively starving. And I mean, it’s here.

This is a novel about class in America. And class is not something people talk about, but I think about it a lot, partly because, you know, I grew up sort of very aware of class, miners at that time, were one of the best unionized workforces in the country. So, you know, when you grow up in coal country, or when you did, you know, a few generations ago, you had this clear understanding of labor and capital, who has the power and who doesn’t, unless your labor is — organized labor is your power. A lot of the prejudice, a lot of the bigotry against Appalachia is classism. We’ve become very sort of awakened, I’ll say to our bigotries, and we’re careful about how we talk about other minorities or oppressed people. And still, you know, liberals say the awfulest things about my people. And I have, you know, how stupid we are and backwards, and I mean, you can’t even watch you know, comedy, the comedy channel for 15 minutes before you hear a Kentucky joke about, you know, the girl I used to date, but she was lying through her tooth. It makes us so mad. As Demon says, We can hear you, do you think we don’t even have cable? You know, when I analyze this I think it’s about class. I think we pretend we’re a classless society, so we’re allowed to make these aspersions because there is no class. But there is. So yeah, this is a very American book and I think I write really American books.

Yes, ma’am.

It’s always surprised me that they’re translated, you know, everywhere, like, you know, in Serbian and Turkish and, and Japanese and Chinese. And in the early days, when actually one of the first translations of my first novel was into Japanese. And I asked my agent, why people want to read this book that’s about, you know, a girl in Kentucky, and they, and she said, the rest of the world is very interested in Americans. And that’s exactly, we export a lot of culture. And so I’m doing my part to export something that I think is pretty authentic.

Yeah, I also want to shout out a piece that ran in The Nation. It was part of the Youth Communication project and a young woman, she grew up in Appalachia, and she’s saying, well, finally someone gets it, like someone understands that I have seen people die, and I’ve lost people in my family and, you know, my parents have had issues with addiction and everything else, but she’s like, now I finally feel seen, and she’s a college student studying ecology and environmental biology.

This is about Demon Copperhead.

It is absolutely about Demon Copperhead. I’ll tell you what, I’ll send it to you because you would love this piece and it’s just the idea that these kids, right. I mean, we talk about resilience in children we talk about in all kinds of communities across America, right? Like look at how resilient these children are. They have horrible situations. And isn’t this great? And I part of me is just saying, Well, yeah, but at the same time, can’t we just start changing systems so children can be less resilient? Like, isn’t that something that we should be thinking of as the grown-ups in the room? Right? Shouldn’t we be thinking about how we make it better? For these tiny people that we are responsible for, even if they are not genetically are tiny people like, aren’t we as the adults? Aren’t we supposed to be responsible for the tiny people?

They are supposed to be our future, right? They are our future. And yeah, okay, resilience means they survived, you know, some of some of their peers didn’t, they survived. But, okay, they’re still alive, but they’re living with trauma. Trauma that gets passed down through generations. So this is not a kind of feature that we want. And that’s something that I really wanted to expose the, you know, these simple things that people don’t know, such as the fact that the foster care system is run as a for profit business and the kids are the product, is that how we want to treat kids and, and at the DSS, you know, these, these networks that are supposed to be taking care of these kids are, so are stretched, so thin, and the workers are so underpaid and the turnover is so great, that a DSS caseworker, who is the legal guardian of a kid in foster care may not actually even though the names of these skills, so that I’m so I’m so glad to hear about that young person’s take on this. I’ve heard from a lot of people, a lot of kids who’ve said, wow, yeah, this is my story that one young woman who grew up in foster care, and she’s now in college at the University of Kentucky, and I just wrote her, she wrote a review that was placed in a couple of places, and she sent it to me. And one of the things she wrote in the review was this book isn’t for people like me, because I already know all of this, this is for other people. And I want them to read it. And I wrote back to I wrote to her, and I told her, first of all, how proud I am of her for everything that she’s done to be the person she is and I can’t wait to see what she does next. But also I said, Yeah, I did write this book for you. I want you to know that you’re a person. When I was a little kid growing up in Kentucky without the faintest idea that people like me could write books. If I had seen someone like myself, in an honest to god book, I would have changed everything. I mean, I probably would have become a writer a decade earlier than just knowing that it was possible. Right. So yeah, I mean, there’s books or what’s in our windows, but they’re also mirrors.

Totally. But you’ve also in the past talked about how being a freelance journalist really helped you hone your novelistic skills. And I’m wondering if we can talk about that for a second. Because, you know, in 2018, you did an essay for the B&N exclusive edition of Unsheltered, which is also a novel I love, but you’re talking about questioning yourself and how you possibly write about a crisis when you’re in the middle of it. And Demon Copperhead, you have done exactly that. And part of me feels like that’s your scientific training part of me feels like that’s the journalism. And part of me thinks that’s being a novelist as well. But all of those pieces come together for you in a really interesting way. And I was hoping you talk about that a little bit?

Well, sure. Well, the main thing, being a journalist did several really life changing things for me, one was just getting a paycheck for writing. Just understanding that if I can sit at this desk and do the work and turn in the piece on time, I get paid and that was a revelation. And I want to do more because I had been writing all my life. But studying biology, getting degrees in biology, because that seems, you know, like I could support myself, I didn’t imagine I can, even though writing was my favorite thing. I didn’t imagine I could support myself as a writer, so that was a revelation. And the other amazing thing that being a journalist did for me is get me out of my shell, I am about the most introverted person that you can imagine if there’s like a spectrum of the extroverts and introverts, like off the charts I’m over there, which is great for a novelist because I spent now all of my working life in this room with no other people just you know, the people in here, and the people back there on the bookshelf, and it’s very quiet, and I love it. I could you know, I could live in a room by myself, and do well, I also have a family they’re great. But yeah, I’m a really introverted person. And you know, in the beginning, also a shy person I was that kid in class we never talked, who sat in the back. That kid that you know, is taught that introversion is wrong, you know, bring them out, make them talk all that was, well, I didn’t, well, then I had this job where I had to just like cold call Kurt Vonnegut, or whoever, and get a statement from this woman that slammed the door in my face. And I, Kurt Vonnegut did not by the way, he was very nice, but, just that sort of terrifying business of picking up a phone and calling somebody that doesn’t necessarily want to talk to me, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn to do. And actually, go places, show up, get in people’s faces, you know, talk to them get the story, even if they’re not ready to talk about it, you know, be compassionate, but get the story. I learned that you can be in interventionists for life, how I’m wired, not going to change, shyness can be changed, and so I’m not shy anymore. And that’s really helpful as a writer because I still have to interview people. I had to sit down and talk with a lot of people who’ve been through really hard things in order to get the information I needed to write this book.

So too, with Demon Copperhead, I know you did talk to a lot of folks. I just want to shout out three writers that I’m sure popped up as you were working. I mean, certainly Beth Macy, Patrick Radden Keefe and Sam Quinones And we’ll drop those book titles in the show notes as well. Because Beth Macy, Dopesick, Lazarus Rising is an incredible book. It’s and it’s so helpful and it’s a beautiful, beautiful book. Patrick Radden Keefe the first time I read him I wanted; I was so mad, and I’ll tell you, if you listen to the audiobook of him reading Empire of Pain, your blood pressure will go because the first time I read it, I was so mad. I was so mad and Dreamland, obviously, by Sam Quinones. But, youknow, we’re talking about the people in your community, though. We’re talking about people you see. And I’m not saying their stories directly come into this book, but it’s really intense writing about your people like this.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And especially kids, but also old people have, you know, there’s so many elderly people who are addicted, because they went to the doctor for an injury and got this bottle of pills and were instructed, as, as you know, Purdue had passed down to them. You take these five o’clock, don’t miss one stay ahead of the pain, and they get to the end of the bottle, and they’re already addicted. And a lot of elderly people haven’t even known that they were addicted, they didn’t really know they were dope sick. They just knew when they finished the bottle, they felt horrible and had to go back to the doctor for more oxy. In every walk of life, there’s so many people who’ve been wrecked by this, families wrecked, I have so much compassion and sympathy for them that I really wanted to get into this book to pass through. So yeah, it’s a very dark, very dark book, I had to spend days and days in, you don’t just get up in the morning and go again, sit down here and say, oh, God, what am I doing? today? It was really hard. There were dark months, of the writing, I’m so lucky that I have a really supportive family, I would just— and I set limits, you know, I would just say, okay, at six o’clock, I’m out of here, I’m ending this. Wherever I am, I’m going to shut down the computer, go downstairs and my dear husband will take my hand and say, Let’s go for a walk. Let’s walk up the road into the woods. And just remember that life is good. We have, you know, we are doing the best we can for everybody that we can and my family is happy and healthy. And you know, just kind of bring me back to what’s good in life. And also, just remind myself that this is for a purpose. I’m not doing this for myself. If I were to do something else, I would go knit a sweater.

I have questions about your sheep, but we’re going to cover some other stuff before I come back to the sheep later as well. So I have questions. I was delighted to know about your sheep. But can we go to Steinbeck for a second? You’ve talked about Cannery Row and the impact and it’s a book that I mean, I love Steinbeck’s body of work as it is and it’s so delightful to be able to pick up stuff like The Wayward Bus that people have never taught and, you know, he just had this eye for America. Right? My eyes are getting really big as I talk about John Steinbeck. And I don’t know if you saw that really great new biography of him, Mad at the World, it came out in 2020. It’s really worth it. It’s so good. But I mean, Steinbeck was doing a lot of what you are doing right. Like East of Eden, is a California story.

It’s the great California novel, right?

Yes. And there are a couple of characters in there that will just always keep surprising you but I feel like you’re sort of in this direct lineage, right? From Steinbeck with what you’re doing and just saying, Hey, listen, we need to look at what’s happening here, we need to look at what we’re doing to ourselves to our communities. And I’m going to be a little funny while I do it, and I’m going to be a little mad while I do it, but I am going to tell you a story because art is the way to get hurt, right? Cannery Row is a book that doesn’t often like, it’s a little higher than say Wayward Bus, right?

Yeah, it’s not part of the most respected canon and it’s not necessarily taught.

It’s not Grapes of Wrath. I just, I want to bring it because honestly, it’s sort of central Northern California, it is not Los Angeles. But I want to talk about the impact that kind of storytelling had on you, because I just, I really liked the story.

Well, that book, that particular book, had a profound effect on me, it sort of turned me into a writer. Just like that, because part of our culture, for better and for worse is this culture of modesty. You do not put yourself above other people, the tall weed gets plucked. It’s very Appalachian, modesty is like just baked into us. The worst thing I heard people say when I was growing up about a woman is she’s parading herself around. So you do not want to parade yourself around, which rings in my ears when I’m on book tour, by the way. Because what is that, but parading yourself around? So it’s just like you just grow up with these rules that are in in your DNA, right? That’s part of why I never, I mean, I just love to write, I always was writing poems and making up stories and keeping them very secret. And part of it was that I thought, well, I’m an ordinary person, regular people don’t write books. And all the people that I know are ordinary people. They’re not fancy. They’re not famous. They’re not, you know, high and mighty. I don’t know any people like that. So what would I write about ever? So I guess maybe when I was, I was about late teens when I read Cannery Row and I just loved it. I don’t even know where I found it. The library, I found everything at the library. And I just was just loving all these people, even though you know, they’re in California, but they could have been my neighbors. It was the same little community of ordinary people who do these goofy things like I know; we’ll go catch frogs. And there’s one chapter in there that’s from the told from the point of view of a groundhog. That rocked my world, like everybody in every little person in this funny community. Sort of funny, threadbare, not wealthy, not important people community, including the groundhog had a point of view. And all together, they made something glorious. They told you something about the world that you didn’t know before. And when I read that, I just thought I could write a book like that. I could write like that. And that was The Bean Trees, my first novel was my version of Cannery Row. When I was young, I just read you know, I just read voraciously, everything I could get my hands on. And these certain books just would, you know, ring my bell and tell me something new about what fiction could be in the world, what it could do. I wasn’t thinking so much about Steinbeck, but as I went on, I kept going back to Steinbeck thinking, okay, he’s doing what I want to do in all these different ways. And I learned different specific things like the way he uses the dramatic point of view in Of Mice and Men, for example, I studied that to say, okay, I can write about a person who’s very much not me, whose brain I don’t fully understand the character like Lenny, but I have to do it from the outside by a very careful observation. So that’s been my answer all along. Pretty straightforward answer to that question of authenticity and who am I allowed write about, which is a very big question these days. That’s my answer. I’m allowed to write about anybody I want from the outside. I don’t go inside and try to represent what the brain was like inside. But anyway, all these different things I learned from Steinbeck. And then finally, I sort of grew up and said, Oh, legacy, he’s like my writing grandfather. He’s one of the few writers who really persisted through that era of US history when art and politics bitter divorce. How the McCarthy era when it was it was it was it was done to artists, they lost their jobs, if they tried to be political. He, he’s the voice that of the 20th century that just kept talking, kept talking to us all.

And one of the ways you pass on his legacy to is through this PEN/Bellwether prize that you have sponsored since 2000. And Lisa Ko The Leavers was one of the picks and also Jamila Minnicks’ Moonrise over New Jessup is out now, there’s a new one coming for 2023 that’s not yet pubbed, but I want to shout her out, Fabienne Josephat, Kingdom of No Tomorrow, that’s the 2023 winner. And I just I would really like to talk about this prize for a second because I think it’s really important. It’s a cash prize for emerging writers, let’s call them folks who have not yet been published. And you do this in conjunction with some other folks. And I think it’s just really important to talk about it for a second, would you mind bringing us through?

I’d be delighted to, yeah, when I started this in 2000, after I got my first big advance for Poisonwood Bible, I’m a very low overhead person, my family and I, we don’t need a lot to live on. We like living simply. So I thought, well, what am I going to do with this money? And it seemed like, at that time, I felt like I was working against such strong headwinds against the kind of writing that I like to do, which is what I would call socially engaged fiction, fiction that really just engages with issues that I think we all, you know, shouldn’t be thinking about and want to be thinking about. I was just not done. Partly, I think that was because I’m female. And there’s this thing about women, you know, assuming moral authority, I was accused of ambition, whereas men would be praised for it.

I’m sorry, I’m trying not to, I’m trying not to make snorting noises. Dangerously close.

But so yeah, I mean, a lot of it was that, but it was just also a time in American letters, where there was just no courage in terms of social engagement. I was just all minimalism and not meaning. So I thought, that’s the kind of writing I want to support and I want to sort of give it cache for publishers, for writers for readers. And the best way to do that maybe would be to find a manuscript that has not been published, and award it with publication. So this is a really, this is a unique writing prize, all the writing prizes, go to people who are already published, who have usually already done a lot in their careers. And it’s just like a nice pat on the back. So you can say, Oh, I won the Pulitzer, yipee, which is also very nice, but I didn’t need it. You know what I say? I’ll say it didn’t change my life so much. I wanted a life changing award, I wanted an award that would establish a career for a writer. So that’s what we do. We read unpublished manuscripts, and the winning manuscript is awarded $25,000, which is a big fat writing price. That’s a good writing price. More than the Pulitzer, I would expect. So it’s a chunk of money. And in addition to that, you get to work with an editor, and you get published guaranteed. And so you also get the advance from the publisher and the publicity and all of that. So it’s just a life changing award that I wanted to create and fund to help put these writers into the world. And we’ve now put it’s every other year because it’s a lot of work to read and publish. And all that the administration and PEN does the administration, and they do a wonderful job in these, whatever, 23 years, we’ve put a lot of writers into the world like Lisa, they keep writing great books, and that makes me so happy.

It’s a lot of runway. It’s a lot of runway, and it’s a good runway, and you know, part of why I raise it one is any excuse to talk about books. Hi, but also, you know, it’s part of the literary community, right? It’s like what we’re supposed to do, we’re supposed to hold the door open for other people. And you know, art is political. Art is political, you have a point of view. And maybe you don’t agree with someone’s point of view. But you have a point of view. And I love you made this point years ago, in an interview you did with Richard Price, who I quite like one of the nicest men in the world, and also just a really great writer, but you’re talking about finding the universal, right, finding the universal and a story where someone can connect. And again, I have no connection to Appalachia beyond what I’ve read. And you just pulled me in to this world, I get so excited just thinking about all of these voices, this chorus and yeah, demon, obviously, is the heart and soul of this book. But even the bad guys, I was like, well, I’m gonna see what you do. And there’s not necessarily a direct correlation to everyone in David Copperfield. So if you’re thinking, Oh, no, Charles Dickens is not my guy. David Copperfield is not my guy, doesn’t matter. Just read Demon Copperhead.

You don’t have to read or even like, Dickens at all. If you do, you’ll find like a million private jokes between me and Charles Dickens. Which is, you know, just those are just easter eggs, but you don’t need to. But um, yeah, what you say about art being political is what I’ve always thought. And I think that the heart of it for fiction is empathy that it gives you, it puts you inside of the other. So it breaks down these walls between us, which is a really political act. It’s kind of the opposite of war, or meanness, that’s why it just like for years and years and years, sort of baffled me when people always like, always opened the interview with, well, you’re a political writer, right? And like, why do you why do you do that? Because I live in this world, right? And like, why would I write about sexism? Because I breathe it and I live in experiencing it actually, in this interview, you might not know — not this one.

I understand. I do understand.

How can how can an artist not be political? I mean, even a romance novel has a point of view and I couldn’t even figure out why it was so singled out, I think maybe, you know, maybe the ambition thing, writing about large themes, also being you know, sort of a working class writer. I think what people often meant by that was “this makes me uncomfortable”. If it makes me uncomfortable, then you shouldn’t have written it. So the good news is I think we’re getting over that. I think when I look at the most talked about novels of recent years, you know, I mean, they’re The Overstory by Richard Powers, they’re, you know, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, they’re, I think that the entry into this sort of this new openness in publishing, to socially engaged fiction, I think the entry was identity politics, that sort of led the way and now, we are accepting a lot of sort of diverse points of view, the publishing world has gotten so much more sort of open minded about whatever political art is, that I’m wondering, you actually, I’m sort of in a, an existential moment with the bellwether, I love that it brings a new writer into the world. But I wonder if we need that exact Bellwether, or if the bellwether needs to be looking for some other voice that needs more help. It’s just something to think about.

I mean, you know, Orion magazine, they’re a good crew of folks. I’m very fond of them. And they’re working actually on a sort of an education program in conjunction with Brown University, sort of workshopping some stuff with some up-and-coming writers. And I’m just like, oh, well, seems like I don’t know that environmental writing. I mean, I think there’s some folks who, there’s so much room to roam in fiction, and especially when you’re dealing with something that’s as big as sort of climate change or, you know, just the environment in general what we’re doing, like farming, for instance, I never knew anything about tobacco farming. I just honestly, I thought at this point, it was all sort of the giant commercial farms. It never occurred to me that smaller farmers would be involved in this in any way.

Actually, interestingly, tobacco is the one crop that cannot be farmed on an industrial scale. The only crop that that still has to be raised by small family farms. And so one more A unprintable word that has happened to my region. Yeah. Because that was the base of the this county, all the counties around here, the county I grew up in the base of their economy was tobacco. And it was so odd for me, you know, who like tobacco was, you know, was new shoes, tobacco was how to go to college and to go to college and hear people saying, oh, you know, tobacco is evil, tobacco had just recently become evil, or was in the process? And if I would say, but what about the tobacco farmers people just had no notion that farmers were growing this or that they didn’t have any choice about it. I guess it’s the same with food. You know, we don’t really think too much about where the food comes from.

I was a weird little kid in New England in the 70s, because we had a working farm just a couple of doors down, and my brother and I every fall, or whenever there would be a new piglet, and then the piglet would turn into a hog and then would disappear. And we would go running into the house and say, Where’s the pig? Our neighbor would just say, in the freezer, and we’d say, okay, I mean, we were exposed to this stuff very early on, maybe it influences the way I eat. But also, I just live in places where I have access to green markets, and I have access to all sorts of wonderful, amazing things. And I don’t honestly have to think about it that much and I do feel guilty about that. But oh, I’m a city person.

Well, those are the choices you have and among the choices you have, you’re making the good ones. So what’s to feel guilty about? I feel like food is one and we talked about this in the book and Animal Vegetable Miracle that I’m making more sustainable food choices is one of one of the few areas of you know, sort of righteous living, it’s actually there’s no sacrifice, it actually tastes better. It’s just more fun. You know, it’s more delicious. It’s like, you know, it’s the kind of opposite of tightening your belt.

Yeah, we are lucky. And actually, before I let you go, though, can we go back to the sheep for a second, because you also raise Icelandic sheep. And I know we’ve had this big conversation about all of the things that are broken, but I want to go back to this beautiful place that you live.

Which is really so much not broken. I mean, yeah, it matters. Yeah, no, there’s so many things that I love about living here. You know, when well-meaning friends from far away sort of ask me how I can live in the middle of nowhere. I look around and think oh man, this is everywhere. This is my everything. All the food that we can eat is growing, growing right here, our water comes out of the mountain directly into our house in the scheme of things with a changing climate. We’re so lucky here, we’re getting more rain than we used to but generally speaking and I should say this quietly or everybody else in the planet want to move here, but we’re doing okay, you know, we’re actually pretty well set we’re not near a coast we’re not you know, the unsettled weather is very hard on farmers, but you know, everyone’s adjusting. But yeah, we even we grow our own food, and we grow our own sweaters. Yeah, we have a flock of Icelandic sheep. They’re very beautiful. They’re all colors, they have horns, they are white, black brown spotted.

I did not know you can have spotted Icelandic sheep. I knew they had a variety of colors. And they also have that crazy long well, but how many head of sheep do you have in a flock?

Depends before or after lambing, but because they have twins or more, they could do a flock of 20 goes to you know, a flock of 40 in the space of a month, but the stable flock is about 20. They are good to eat. We say they’re going to freezer camp. They exist in the world to be to grow wool and to be eaten. If they didn’t have that purpose, they their lives would never have happened. So that’s how I look at it when you know, a leg of lamb on the table is that animal’s actualization, and I know there’s people who just don’t, don’t get that and think that I’m a horrible person for saying so. But you know, everything eats, I’m a biologist, everything eats, has to eat something alive. Unless you happen to have chlorophyll in your leaves and then you are a God. So yeah, our sheep grow this beautiful wool, which we shear twice a year and a mill which is run by a friend, it’s not too far from here. She makes the yarn, she makes beautiful yarn. And her mill is solar powered and my sheep are solar powered. There is no fossil no fossil fuels go into those sheep because they eat grass. They the sun turned into food by those, those wonderful gods, the grasses. And so then I knit sweaters and you know, when I give someone a sweater I say this is this is made of pure sun. I love that, that no fossil fuels entered. Well, I do have to drive to the mill, but I have an electric car now.

And all things considered, all things considered. That’s a very small footprint for very, very cool project.

Yeah, so yeah, I knit with my own wool. And it’s really fun. I’ve actually just entered into this collaboration with a knitting publishing company where I’m designing patterns that people can knit with my wool.

I say Oh, dear, as someone who has multiple projects going. I mean, the thing is, I love books, and I love words, and I love writers. But sometimes you need a thing that isn’t that you need just to be able to play with.

That’s so interesting you say that because I feel like knitting is the one of the most important things it does for me as it quiets. It’s like a word gumball machines somewhere in my head that just keeps spitting them out. They just keep coming, keep coming. And sometimes I just need the words to shut up. And knitting does that for me just the words go because it’s nonverbal as mathematical. Or it’s something it’s and it’s textual. And I just love getting the needles and getting the wool in my hands and just feeling my whole my blood pressure. Relax, and just the whole thing. And then plus, I’m the kind of person who, whose recreation needs to end with a product.

I respect, I respect I’m just a maker.

I guess I’m sort of goal oriented. I just can’t you know, when I when I see people, you know, adults going to get into video games, you know, for like hours on end, I just think I guess it’s maybe it’s, I don’t know, it’s a different kind of brain. I need, I need a product at the end of all that work. I need something to show for it.

There’s so much you can do. But also part of why I wanted to play with your farm studying homesteading piece is not just because have I dreamed of having sheep? Yes, I have. But I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. But that said, it’s important to remember where this book is grounded. I know, Demon Copperhead is going to be a very intense reading experience for a lot of people. But to know that it comes out of a really big-hearted love for a place and a community and a pride in that community. And even though the community is put through horrible, horrible, horrible things, many of which are out of its control. And the question is, where do we go next? And I just, there’s so much beauty in this book, for all of the difficulty. And yeah, there’s some terrible things that happened. But there’s a lot of beauty in this book. And I just really want people to understand where it’s grounded, and where it’s coming from.

Well, thank you for that, and where and what and what can be done because I think what can come out of the love I put into this book is a kind of love and compassion or for a category of people that maybe haven’t been seen enough and haven’t been thought about enough. And plenty can be done for them.

Beth Macy’s newer book Raising Lazarus

it’s a great place to begin. If you’ve found some compassion in your heart for the addicted people, then, then from there, you can learn about how important it is that we put resources into the programs that meet addicted people where they are, yeah, that there is not a prison, you know, incarcerated to understand incarceration does not cure addiction. Police don’t cure Addiction Medicine, and pro and supportive programs, cure addiction. And people will only get that kind of help if you start by giving them clean needles and fentanyl test strips and things that keep them alive until they can can get to a lifesaving kind of treatment.

Harm Reduction matters. It works. I mean we have evidence.

Exactly. And I was so glad on my tour. I don’t when I when I toured the US for Demon. I don’t ever accept speaking fees because I don’t want to be a professional speaker because of like, see the above about introversion. I don’t ever want that to be my job, but sometimes on tour, I get put into, you know, a schedule of a lecture series or something for a writer is an honorarium, sometimes a very large honorarium. So, whenever that happened on this tour, well, always whenever it happens, I tried to donate it to some local project that sort of connects with the with the theme of the book or with issues of the book. This time, I found several opportunities to donate that honorarium to local Harm Reduction Centers. So, one in Denver in particular, so that that made me happy. Parading herself around could amount to something useful.

Please keep parading yourself around. I just, I mean, as long as I’ve been a bookseller, you’ve been Barbara Kingsolver. So I would very much like it if you continue to do but you’re doing well.

That’s the thing. I mean, I know it’s really helpful for the booksellers and I care so much about booksellers. I know. We need you very much. So thanks to all the booksellers out there, who are who are doing mission work. I appreciate you and I appreciate you and wouldn’t have the career that I have without booksellers.

And that seems like a really nice place to wrap doesn’t it?

Mutual admiration.

Oh absolutely. Barbara Kingsolver. Thank you so much for Demon Copperhead winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I will never get tired of saying that but seriously, thank you for everything you do for books and writers and booksellers. It’s really fun to see you. Thanks.

Thank you for your interest.

Poured Over