Barbara Kingsolver wins Women’s Prize for Fiction with Appalachian novel ‘Demon Copperhead’

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — American novelist Barbara Kingsolver has won the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction for a second time with “Demon Copperhead.” Inspired by Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” the novel is a coming-of-age story set in an Appalachia scarred by poverty and opioid addiction. Kingsolver was awarded the $38,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Wednesday. Journalist Louise Minchin, who chaired the judging panel, said it was “a towering, deeply powerful and significant book.” Kingsolver said she wrote the book to tell stories from a part of the United States — the mountainous Appalachia region — that is often overlooked or regarded as “just a joke.”