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Barbara Kingsolver: Conscientious reflector
When Barbara Kingsolver is not writing, she may be shearing sheep, or harvesting vegetables. Most recently, peppers, tomatillos and cardoons. Cardoons?
"They're like celery on steroids, about 4 feet tall," she said. "You cook and eat the roots of the leaves, like artichokes."
Kingsolver, whose seventh novel, "The Lacuna," comes out next week, described farming as "wonderful for the body and spirit. It gets me outside every day, and unlike the gym, you can't blow it off." So each weekday at 7:30 a.m. she pulls on her mud boots and first walks her daughter Lily to the school bus, a half-mile down the lane from her Appalachian farm in the southwestern corner of Virginia between Roanoke and Knoxville, Tenn.
"If I didn't have a family and a farm, I would write every minute of every day. So it's just as well that I do have these other things in my life to keep me healthy," she said.
In the two years since Kingsolver's last book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," a bestselling first-person paean to being a locavore, the eating locally movement has taken off.
"It was the crest of a wave, which astonished us. I've never been trendy in my life. Instead, I sit at my desk and dream up the next crazy idea."
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Ellroy Confidential
He lives like a monk and swears like a sailor. He worships Beethoven and doesn't own a computer. For novelist James Ellroy, fierceness and stamina are required to reveal giant lies and tell big stories.
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Talking Volumes: Our mission
An innovative regional book club.