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Kim Barnes

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Kim Barnes
Born1958 (age 65–66)
Lewiston, Idaho, U.S.A.
OccupationNovelist, essayist
NationalityAmerican
SpouseRobert Wrigley

Kim Barnes (born 1958 Lewiston, Idaho) is a contemporary American author of fiction, memoir, and personal essays.[1]

Life

She returned with her mother to their logging camp on Orofino Creek in the Clearwater National Forest, where her father worked as a lumberjack. For the next twelve years, she and her family lived in small communities and cedar camps in northern IdahoPierce, Headquarters, and a number of places along the North Fork of the Clearwater River. In 1970, her family moved to Lewiston, Idaho, where Barnes graduated from Lewiston High School in 1976.[2]

Barnes received her B.A. in English from Lewis-Clark State College in 1983, her M.A. in English from Washington State University in 1985, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in 1995. Barnes teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho,[3] and lives with her husband, Robert Wrigley, a poet, in Idaho. They have three children.[4]

The subject matter of Barnes's creative works includes the American West, religious fundamentalism, women's issues, logging, and the environment. In A Country Called Home, one of her main characters has the condition known as synesthesia and sees color when she hears music.

Her work has appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, MORE Magazine, and the Pushcart Prize anthology.

Awards

She is the recipient of two grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. In 1995, she was chosen to receive the PEN/Jerard fellowship given to an emerging woman writer of nonfiction.[5] In 1997, she was honored with a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for In the Wilderness, which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Visions Award.[6] From 2004-2007, she served as Idaho Writer-in-Residence.[7]

Published work

Memoirs

  • In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country (Doubleday/Anchor, ISBN 978-0-385-47821-2)
  • Hungry for the World (Villard, 2000, ISBN 978-0-375-50228-6

Novels

Editor

References