ally abused women.Dolores Claibornelacks chapter
breaks and thus presents itself as one long mono-
logue. Both novels received good reviews and left
some wondering if King would abandon the horror
genre altogether.
In 1996, King experimented with serial publica-
tion.The Green Milewas published in six volumes,
each released a month apart. King found that this
style of writing led to new challenges in maintaining
readers’ interest with each new installment while
still attracting readers who may have missed an ear-
lier segment.
During the decade, King joined the Rock Bottom
Remainders, a rock group consisting of King and au-
thors Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Barbara King-
solver, Robert Fulghum, and Amy Tan, among oth-
ers. He also received critical recognition, winning a
1996 O. Henry Award for the short story “The Man
in the Black Suit.”
On June 19, 1999, while walking along a road in
Maine, King was hit by a man driving a minivan. King
later described the driver as “a character out of one
of my own novels.” King nearly died in the accident
but, after five weeks, was back to writing again, com-
pleting the nonfiction bookOn Writing(2000).
Impact Stephen King continued his hectic publish-
ing schedule during the 1990’s and continued to ex-
plore new methods of publication in the next de-
cade. In 2000, Riding the Bullet, a sixty-six-page
electronic book, or e-book, was downloaded over
500,000 times. Later that year, he tried a serialized
e-book experiment,The Plant, which was less suc-
cessful.
Further Reading
King, Stephen.On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.New
York: Scribner, 2000.
Russell, Sharon A.Revisiting Stephen King: A Critical
Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
2002.
Julie Elliott
See also Literature in the United States; Pub-
lishing; Rock Bottom Remainders, The.
Kingsolver, Barbara
Identification American author
Born April 8, 1955; Annapolis, Maryland
Kingsolver writes about economic injustice and cultural
differences in many of her fictional works. She combines a
thoughtful and sensitive view of life with an insightful ap-
proach to issues of culture through her novels, stories, and
poetr y.
Barbara Kingsolver has written novels, short stories,
poetry, and essays about topics as wide ranging as
missionary life in Africa and community rights in
Native American tribal culture. She was born in
Maryland but grew up in Kentucky. She left her rural
home for college in Indiana, where she majored in
biology at DePauw University. With this background
of study, Kingsolver often adds vivid description to
the settings of her stories. She creates intensely per-
sonal tales for each of her characters, which are of-
ten set against the larger backdrop of political and
economic issues of the time period. Because of her
wide range of experience as a scientist, researcher,
archaeological worker, and translator, she brings a
variety of perspectives to her works. Throughout
all of them she remains committed to honesty and
social justice. In support of those issues, she es-
tablished the Bellwether Prize in 1997, which is
awarded every other year to a first novel which shows
the highest literary quality and the author who
shows dedication to creating literature for social im-
pact and change.
Kingsolver uses her characters, such as Leah in
The Poisonwood Bible(1998), to examine not only the
role of missionaries in Africa but also the larger is-
sues of the influence of outside political powers,
such as the United States on rural and emerging Af-
rican nations. She spent time in Africa as a young
child with her family. In that setting, she started writ-
ing in a journal which she credits as an early influ-
ence on her style as a storyteller. Many of her main
characters are female and fiercely independent. In
Animal Dreams(1990) andPigs in Heaven(1993), her
major characters face life-changing events within
the conflict between Native American culture and
mainstream America. Despite these trials, her char-
acters always acknowledge the community in which
they live and in this way remind the reader that no
one exists separately; we are all part of a greater
canvas.The Nineties in America Kingsolver, Barbara 487