Many of your books are steeped in nature/setting/location. Have you been to all the places you've written about? Do you have to re-visit a place you want to write about or do your writing in that place?

I loved this book! It's in the top 10 of my favorites list. My question would be, are the rumors true about a film adaptation of The Poisonwood Bible?

Good questions, everyone!

I read The Poisonwood Bible when I was in high school and simply adored it. I was captivated by the religious, spiritual, familiar, and cultural undertones to the book. I love stories with layers, and this book presented all I could ask for from a great piece of literature. What personal experiences, if any, influenced the writing of this book and how much/what types of historical research did you conduct before writing the novel?

I am in the middle of Animal, Veg, Miracle and it has already changed my life...my way of thinking of what we eat. Which books have you read that have changed your life?

I just filled up my tires tonight and was worried about overfilling them and I thought of the bean trees.
Where did the idea for that particular fear come from? Personal experience?

The Poisonwood Bible edged out East of Eden as my all time favorite book. I also loved The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven. I'm currently reading "Animal Vegtable Mineral" I'd love to know if you are still gardening and eating all local foods...ie "did the experiment stick?" I've had to read it a bit at a time to prevent myself from going on a food strike as I am still trying to learn my resources in my new town! I have always been a gardener and it's with renewed vigor that I am planning my garden for the next season!

When I read The Poisonwood Bible, I felt I had read a "classic," a great book for the ages whose value would be understood in time and that would be studied by literature students in the same way as books like Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, and The Great Gatsby. I find it to be so layered: it's a great story, but it's also allegorical, allusory, and symbolic, which I find enhances the meaning. I was wondering how you felt about it after finishing it. Also, I was wondering which of the women do you identify with the most?

(I had a group of students who read the book as a choice for summer reading, and they loved Adah, but I identify more with Leah. Thanks for the great book!)

Hello... I am thrilled to ask a question since I am currently reading The Poisonwood Bible. As a writer myself, I am curious 1) how long it took you to write the book and 2) I would like to know how you developed each of the main female characters both before writing began and during the process. Thank you!

In the preface of The Poisonwood Bible you wrote that you waited nearly 30 years for the wisdom and maturity to write that book. As an active writer with that sort of ethic, do you ever find it difficult to have enough material for which you feel ready to write? What else do you do, when the wisdom and maturity is still cooking?

This is kind of self-serving, but: How did you choose to pursue writing over science, and how do you feel your background in biology continues to inform your writing?

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, and Animal Dreams!

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