Women’s Prize for Fiction winner: ‘Charles Dickens’s ghost helped me write it’

Barbara Kingsolver has become the first woman to ever win the Woman’s Prize for Fiction twice

But she seems to be sharing credit with a very famous author: the ghost of Charles Dickens.

Her novel, Demon Copperhead, which also picked up the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was named the winner by Louise Minchin at last night’s Women’s Prize for Fiction Awards.

The book is a reimagining of Dicken’s David Copperfield, set in modern times in the Appalachian Mountains and follows a young boy who navigates foster care, labour exploitation, addiction, love and loss.

Metro spoke to Barbara after she accepted the award. She told Metro: ‘I wanted to write the great Appalachian novel. It’s a rural economically depressed region that’s really very much looked down on in the US.

‘I wanted to tell the story of how this happened to us and how resilient we are, how it’s amazing that we are still standing and the beautiful parts of our culture and community and nature.’

But Kingsolver said she didn’t know how to start the book, so while in the UK at the end of her last book tour she visited the Bleak House in Kent, which is where Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield.

‘I had this ghostly visit with him,’ Barbara said as she recounted her time at that hotel.

‘I was sitting at his desk thinking “who wants to read about orphans and poverty” and I heard him say “I do, they will” and I really truly heard him and felt his vision and I heard him say, “you have to do this and let the child tell the story”.

‘That night on that desk, on Charles Dickens’s desk, I got my notebook and started writing.

‘It’s crazy right, I don’t usually talk to dead people, like ever. It really felt like, not just permission, I really felt like he was saying “you go, girl”.’

From that night it took Barbara three years to finish the novel and at 68 she feels like she is ‘at the peak of my (her) career’.

When it came to giving a word of advice to aspiring writers, Barbara had a rather niche piece tip: ‘ Don’t smoke, because people go to literary fiction for wisdom and wisdom comes with age, so whatever you can do to help yourself live longer, do that.

‘I’m so glad I’m not a model or an athlete.’

She also said: ‘Think about what you have to say. Find what it is that matters most to you, find that passion that will sit you down in a chair and bring you back, day after day after day for the years it takes.’

Barbara is extremely qualified to give advice after winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction for the first time back in 2010 with her novel The Lacuna, and she has also been shortlisted multiple times.

Chair of Judges, author and journalist Louise Minchin said: ‘An expose of modern America, its opioid crisis and the detrimental treatment of deprived and maligned communities, Demon Copperhead tackles universal themes – from addiction and poverty, to family, love and the power of friendship and art – it packs a triumphant emotional punch and it is a novel that will withstand the test of time.’

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, £7.99

The book also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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