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Apr. 28--DURHAM -- The North Carolina Festival of the Book started off with a slam Thursday night as a standing-room-only crowd prompted guards to shut the door of the cavernous Duke Chapel so Barbara Kingsolver could deliver the festival's keynote address.
Those lucky enough to squeeze inside heard the best-selling author of novels including "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Prodigal Summer" deliver an impassioned speech about the connections between art and politics.
Literature, Kingsolver said, is a "tool for changing the world."
She said she tries "to engage with the world's broken promises" by telling stories that address racism, sexism, imperialism and other forces that place "limits on hope."
Through these fictions she tries to create bonds of empathy between readers and characters who live in worlds different from their own. More than just moving her fans emotionally, Kingsolver said, she hopes her work will "move them, possibly, to political action."
To encourage other writers to create political art, Kingsolver is personally funding one of the richest literary prizes in the United States. At Duke Chapel, she announced the 2006 winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, which Kingsolver said is the nation's only major award specifically for works addressing issues of social justice.
Hillary Jordan of Tivoli, N.Y., won this year's $25,000 prize and a contract with Scribner publishing house for her unpublished novel, "Mudbound."
It tells the story of the contempt that greeted African-American veterans who returned to the Mississippi Delta after serving their country during World War II.
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