Latest news with #Kingsolver
Time Magazine
08-05-2025
- General
- Time Magazine
Barbara Kingsolver
In the years leading up to the publication of her Pulitzer-Prize winning 2022 novel Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver spent time in Lee County, Va., the drug-ravaged southern Appalachian region where it's set (about an hour and a half from her home). She sat down with people in active addiction, as well as those in recovery, and listened to their stories. 'I gained so much compassion, and I wanted to do something,' she says. 'I thought, 'Lee County gave me a story—I'm going to give something back that really makes a difference.' I mean, how could I not?' After the book was published, Kingsolver traveled back to Lee County and convened a group of friends who live in the area for a breakfast meeting. If she had $100,000 to help people in addiction recovery, she asked them, where should it go? Everyone agreed that in this county with so few resources, the greatest need was for a sober home where people in recovery could live in safety and support: with counseling, transportation, and job training. 'When people leave their addiction behind, they almost always leave behind their whole word,' Kingsolver says. 'People come out of addiction with no social capital at all, no friends, no skills, no education, no transportation or even a driver's license. Addiction strips you of all those things.' Kingsolver found the 'perfect house,' doubled her investment, and used her royalties from Demon Copperhead to turn it into a recovery home for people battling addiction. The Higher Ground Women's Recovery Residence opened in 2025, and Kingsolver and her team are already working on expansion plans. Readers around the world have embraced the project along with the Lee County community. Fans in Switzerland raised money to order porch furniture for the house. The local community college offered free tuition for women residents to take classes, and nearby attorneys have donated their services. 'I think the happiest part of this is that it went from a wild dream or a wish in my head to an actual house—a beautiful house with a red door and a red roof and women inside who are getting their lives back,' she says. 'It's unstoppable at this point. I think it's going to grow and grow.'
New York Times
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Demon Copperhead' Explored Addiction. Its Profits Built a Rehab Center.
When Barbara Kingsolver was writing 'Demon Copperhead,' a novel that explores the devastating effects of the opioid crisis in southern Appalachia, she was doubtful that people would want to read about such a grim subject. To draw readers in, she knew she would have to ground the narrative in real stories and push against stereotypes about the region. So she traveled to Lee County, Va., a corner of Appalachia that's been battered by drug abuse, and spoke to residents whose lives had been wrecked by opioids. 'I sat down and spent many hours with people talking about their addiction journey,' Kingsolver said. 'There are stories that went straight into the book.' Published in 2022, the novel was an instant success, in time selling three million copies and winning a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2023. But even before the novel came out, Kingsolver felt indebted to the people who shared their stories. 'I felt like, I am getting a novel from this place, and I'm going to give something back,' she said. Kingsolver decided to use her royalties from 'Demon Copperhead' to fund a recovery program for people battling addiction. In a social media post this week, Kingsolver announced that she has founded a recovery house for women in Lee County, where the novel is set. The center, 'Higher Ground Women's Recovery Residence,' will house between eight and 12 women recovering from drug addiction, offering them a place to stay, for a small fee, for up to two years, as well as counseling and other forms of support, like free community college classes. Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and lives on a farm in Virginia. As someone raised in the region, she said, she felt she couldn't ignore the opioid epidemic in her fiction. But she struggled for years with how to write about the issue in a way that would make readers pay attention. While on a book tour in England, Kingsolver stayed in a bed-and-breakfast where Charles Dickens had worked on his novel 'David Copperfield,' and found inspiration in the story and its resilient young narrator. In 'Demon Copperhead,' which is loosely based on Dickens' novel, Kingsolver tells the story of Damon Fields, a boy who is born to a single teenage mother who struggles with drug addiction. He ends up in foster care and later succumbs to opioid abuse. As soon as the novel was released, she resolved to find a tangible way to help people whose lives have been upended by addiction. 'The first week that this book hit the stores and was so successful, I said OK, I'm going to bring this home, I'm going to be able to do something concrete with this book that will help the people who told me their stories,' she said. 'I had these royalties that 'Demon' brought me. I took that money and went back to Lee County and said, what can we do with this?' The biggest need, she learned, was for support for recovering addicts, who often had no housing or job prospects. She and her husband, Steven Hopp, started a nonprofit, 'Higher Ground,' to create a residential home for women, and provided the funds for the nonprofit to purchase the property last summer. A grand opening is planned for this spring, Kingsolver said, but some residents have already moved in. Kingsolver said she's been heartened by support the project has received from local organizations, including church groups that have helped get the living space in shape, a local store that donated furniture and a grant from the Lee County Community Foundation. 'You might, in earlier times, have expected stigma, for people not to be open to this, but instead it's been, 'Yes in my backyard,'' Kingsolver said. 'This is the reality of where we live,' she continued. 'Everybody knows someone touched by the opioid epidemic.'
