Barbara Kingsolver at home in Virginia. Photograph: Jessica Tezak for the Guardian.

“I’m in a really unusual position,” she says, “because I work as a literary writer. I work at the level of the sentence, at the level of the image, the metaphor, the theme, but I also have this commitment to accessibility, which I suppose comes from the fact I grew up here. It’s the same reason I sent my kids to public schools: I want to belong to people. I don’t want to be above them. So I would really like anyone who can read to be able to read my novels and I would like to give them a reason to turn every page.”

(Lidija Haas, “Barbara Kingsolver: ‘It feels as though we’re living through the end of the world,’” The Guardian, 10-8-18)

(c) 2018 JMN.