Barbara Kingsolver: ‘What does love feel like? At 16, breaking the speed limit. Years later, a warm bath’

The author on the FBI tapping her phone, teaching herself to read aged three, and why she knits in meetings

Born in Maryland, in the US, Barbara Kingsolver, 71, won a music scholarship to DePauw University in Indiana. She became a journalist and published her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988. Her award-winning books include The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead, which was published in 2022 and won the Pulitzer, the James Tait Black prize and the Women’s prize for fiction. In 2025, she founded the Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence in Lee County, Virginia, where the novel is set. Her latest novel is Partita. She lives in Virginia with her second husband and has two children.

When were you happiest? Right after the births of my children. Those hormones are strong medicine: they erase all memory of recent gruelling events and crown you goddess, author of divine creation.

What is your greatest fear? Being on a transatlantic flight without a good book.

What is your earliest memory? Teaching myself to read, at age three. I was so covetous of whatever my father was getting from his newspaper, I picked it up after he set it aside and stared with fierce intention, naming and sounding out letters until the first whole word broke into my brain. It was “orange”.

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Refusing to take responsibility. I can forgive anything, if the offender will just say, “I did that. It was wrong, and I’m sorry.” I can’t understand why some people fight it so hard. Especially those of the male persuasion.

Describe yourself in three words Adventurous. Hopeful. Grateful.

What makes you unhappy? I hate letting people down.

Who would play you in the film of your life? I’m told surprisingly often that I resemble Meryl Streep. But I expect she’s booked up.

What is your most unappealing habit? Grumbling impatience. I’m not very nice about people wasting my time. It’s the reason I knit. When I’m stranded in some long-winded meeting, I hold my tongue, knit furiously and think: I will get out of here with a pair of socks.

What was the last lie that you told? Yes, of course I fed the dog this morning. (While hurriedly feeding the dog.)

What do you owe your parents? Nothing. They each gave me a lot and, in different ways, each extracted their pound of flesh. We made our peace in their final hours.

What does love feel like? Depends. When you’re 16, it feels like breaking the speed limit. A lot of years later, it feels like a warm bath.

Which living person do you most despise and why? The same one that a growing majority of my compatriots, and most of you reading this right now, would like never to see on their news feeds again. And the big, beautiful irony of it is, he could read this and have no idea whom we’re talking about.

What is the worst job you’ve done? Cleaning houses where whole families, including the children, would call me “the cleaning girl” instead of learning my name.

How often do you have sex? Exactly as often as I like.

What has been your closest brush with the law? In the 1980s I was phone-tapped and held under surveillance by the FBI for more than four years because of my (fully legal) work in human rights organisations.

Would you rather have more sex, money or fame? Can we please add a happy marriage to this list?