Barbara Kingsolver always said she didn’t have writer’s block. But he admits he felt discouraged as he approached his latest novel, “Partita.”
In an interview with Jenna Bush Hager for the Open Book with Jenna podcast, Kingsolver said he wasn’t quite sure how he would follow up his 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Demon Copperhead,” an Appalachia-set retelling of “David Copperfield.”
Kingsolver’s books always begin with a question. He said his final question was: “What am I going to do after ‘Demon Copperhead’?”
This isn’t Kingsolver’s first highly featured book. Publishing since 1988, the author has had several bestselling books, including “The Poisonwood Bible,” a Pulitzer Prize nominee and Oprah’s Book Club pick in 1998.
Not worrying about public opinion is key to the writing process, he said.
“Until (‘Demon Copperhead’) I was pretty good at writing without anyone looking over my shoulder,” he said. “I don’t just worry about that. It’s very important. Not to worry about what other people want from me, but to worry about what I have to say because of my particular place in the world, my experiences, my femininity and motherhood. It’s not that I’m writing about myself, I’m writing about the things that are important to me and that come to me because of who I am.”
He said he sought advice from longtime novelist Richard Powers, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2018 hit “The Overstory.”
“’How did you handle this?’ I said. “He said, ‘Well, I decided to follow it up with something incomparably different,'” he said.
Kingsolver found the advice “hugely liberating”.
Her next book, “Partita,” which was selected as Read With Jenna’s October 2026 selection, is a quieter book that focuses on a single woman and the love story that derails and defines her life.
“This was an epic epic. I’m going to write something intimate. How about a love story? The world might need a love story,” she recalled thinking about “Partita.”
The novel follows Livia, a piano prodigy who attends college in a small town in Kentucky.
He was interested in exploring “the existing class barriers that prevent working-class people from believing they can go to university, that they can access the arts”.
The book raised bigger questions about art and literature at a time when resources for the humanities are dwindling because people think “it’s not the most important thing.”
“But it’s not frivolous,” he said of the art. “This is survival.”