NEW YORK — Barbara Kingsolver, this year's recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement, remembers well the years she couldn't imagine receiving such honors.
''I just felt this continuous skepticism, not from readers but from critics and the gatekeepers. It was on two counts,'' Kingsolver, 69, said during a recent telephone interview. ''One: Because I was a rural writer and I lived in a rural place. I'm not a New Yorker. I don't write about city things, so that's always sort of positioned me as an outsider. Two: I'm a woman, and, certainly 30 years ago that was a strike against the writer."
On Friday, the National Book Foundation announced that Kingsolver was the 37th winner of its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL), which has previously been given to Toni Morrison,Philip Roth and Joan Didion among others. Kingsolver's novels, including ''The Bean Trees,'' ''The Poisonwood Bible'' and ''Animal Trees," have sold millions of copies and have touched upon social issues from immigration and drug abuse to the environment and income inequality.
Nominations for the medal, which includes a $10,000 cash prize, are made by former National Book Award winners, finalists, judges and other members of the literary community. Kingsolver will be honored during a Nov. 20 dinner ceremony in Manhattan, when winners in five competitive categories will be announced.
''I feel like I've been on this steady course, and it's a remarkable and wonderful feeling to be appreciated and honored this way by my peers,'' Kingsolver said. ''It's not someone outside the field. It's the people who see literature as our livelihood and our spiritual anchor. And that means the world to me.''
At the ceremony, the Book Foundation will also present a lifetime achievement medal to activist-publisher W. Paul Coates for ''outstanding service'' to the American Literary Community. He will be introduced by his son, the author-journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself a National Book Award winner. Kingsolver will receive her award from her agent, Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin agency, whose eponymous founder was like a ''mother to both Sam and me, so it felt perfect to me that we should stand together on this special occasion,'' she said.
Kingsolver is being celebrated at a time when her career has never been stronger; her most recent novel, ''Demon Copperhead,'' was her most successful yet. A retelling of Charles Dickens' ''David Copperfield,'' the young narrator a boy from Appalachia, ''Demon Copperhead'' was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 and sold so well for so long as a hardcover that only this fall is it coming out in a paperback edition.
Kingsolver has received numerous other awards, including a National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction — twice. She even established her own award, the Bellwether Prize for Social Change, which has cited books by Lisa Ko and Gayle Brandeis among others.