‘Demon Copperhead’ author Barbara Kingsolver to receive National Book Award for lifetime achievement

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Kingsolver, this year’s recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement, remembers well the years she couldn’t imagine receiving such honors.

“I just felt this continuous skepticism, not from readers but from critics and the gatekeepers. It was on two counts,” Kingsolver, 69, said during a recent telephone interview. “One: Because I was a rural writer and I lived in a rural place. I’m not a New Yorker. I don’t write about city things, so that’s always sort of positioned me as an outsider.