Biography
Kim Barnes was born in Lewiston, Idaho, and one week later returned with her mother to their small line-shack on Orofino Creek, where her father worked as a gyppo logger. The majority of her childhood was spent with her younger brother, Greg, in the isolated settlements and cedar camps along the North Fork of Idaho’s Clearwater River. She was the first member of her family to attend college, and holds a BA in English from Lewis-Clark State College, an MA in English from Washington State University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana.
In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, Barnes’ first memoir, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, received a PEN/Jerard Fund Award, and was awarded a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. Her second memoir, Hungry for the World, was a Borders Books New Voices Selection. She is also the author of three novels: Finding Caruso; A Country Called Home, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction and named a Best Book by The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and The Oregonian (Northwest); and In the Kingdom of Men, a story set in 1960s Saudi Arabia, listed as a Best Book by San Francisco Chronicle and The Seattle Times.
Barnes has co-edited two anthologies: Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers (with Mary Clearman Blew) and Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty (with Claire Davis). Her essays, poems, and stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The New York Times, WSJ online, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Shenandoah, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Magazine, MORE Magazine, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She is a former Idaho Writer-in-Residence, a recipient of the Governor’s Arts Award, and is a University of Idaho Distinguished Professor of English Emerita. Barnes has three grown children and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.