Barbara Kingsolver on the history of addiction and poverty in Appalachia

Here & Now Anytime

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4.1 • 953 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

In her novel "Demon Copperhead," author Barbara Kingsolver tells the story of poverty and addiction in contemporary Appalachia. Here & Now's Scott Tong spoke with her back in 2022 when the book came out. Tong caught up with Kingsolver in western Virginia to talk about the power of home, poverty and addiction.

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0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design.
0:09.2	MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com.
0:17.5	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:24.5	Thank you. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. It's no good to have outsiders speaking for us.
0:28.8	We need to speak for ourselves.
0:32.7	Barbara Kingsolver at home in Appalachia.
0:36.3	It's Friday, July 11th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and
0:40.5	WBOR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, Barbara Kingsolver is a best-selling writer of several novels.
0:57.3	Her latest Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2023.
1:02.7	Demon Copperhead is based on Charles Dickens' David Copperfield.
1:06.9	Both focus on kids and poverty.
1:09.7	Dickens in Industrial England. Hers in rural Appalachia,
1:14.1	a place she knows a lot about. If I'm going to write books from an authentic place,
1:20.8	I need to write them from this place and these people that made me.
1:27.2	We're going to hear more from Barbara Kingsolver in just a minute.
1:30.4	And Scott Tong talked to Barbara Kingsolver about the book in 2022
1:34.2	before it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
1:37.0	But the themes in Demon Copperhead are as relevant as ever today.
1:40.9	And Scott, you've done your own reporting in Appalachia since then.
1:43.9	Yeah.
1:44.1	Talking to people about poverty and addiction, injustice. Is that, you've done your own reporting in Appalachia since then, talking to people about
1:44.7	poverty and addiction, injustice. Is that why you wanted to return to this book now and to
	...

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