Lois Lowry

Lois Ann Lowry (/ˈlaʊri/; née Hammersberg; born March 20, 1937) is an American writer. She is the author of many books for children and young adults, including The Giver Quartet, Number the Stars, the Anastasia series, and Rabble Starkey. She is known for writing about difficult subject matters, dystopias, and complex themes in works for young audiences.

Lowry has won two Newbery Medals: for Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1994. Her book Gooney Bird Greene won the 2002 Rhode Island Children's Book Award.

Many of her books have been challenged or even banned in some schools and libraries. The Giver, which is common in the curricula in some schools, has been prohibited in others.

Lowry was born on March 20, 1937, in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, to Katherine Gordon Landis and Robert E. Hammersberg. Her maternal grandfather, Merkel Landis, a banker, created the Christmas Club savings program in 1910. Initially, Lowry's parents named her "Cena" for her Norwegian grandmother, but upon hearing the news, her grandmother telegraphed and instructed Lowry's parents that the child should have an American name.

Lowry was the middle child. She had an older sister named Helen, and a younger brother named Jon. Helen died of cancer in 1962, but Lowry and her brother still share a close relationship.

Lowry's father was an army dentist, whose work moved the family all over the United States and to many parts of the world. Lowry and her family moved from Hawaii to Brooklyn, New York, in 1940, when Lowry was three years old. They relocated in 1942 to her mother's home town in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when Lowry's father was deployed to the Pacific during World War II. Lowry began reading at three years old, and after first grade, she skipped second at the Franklin School in Carlisle. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a writer.

After World War II ended, Lowry moved with her family to Tokyo, Japan, where her father was stationed from 1948 to 1952. Lowry attended seventh and eighth grades at the American School in Japan, a school for dependents of those involved in the military. She returned to the United States when the Korean War began in 1950. Lowry and her family lived in Carlisle again in 1950, where she attended her freshman year in high school before moving to Governors Island, New York, when her father was assigned to First Army Headquarters there. Lowry briefly attended Curtis High School, on Staten Island, then graduated from high school at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, New York, attending from 1952 to 1954. She then attended Pembroke College, which became fully merged with Brown University in 1971. There she met her future husband, Donald Grey Lowry.

Lowry left the university in 1956 after her marriage to Donald Grey Lowry, a U.S. Navy officer. The couple moved several times from San Diego to New London, Connecticut, to Key West, Florida, to Charleston, South Carolina, to Cambridge, Massachusetts and finally to Portland, Maine. They had two daughters, Alix and Kristin, and two sons, Grey and Benjamin. While raising her children, Lowry completed her degree in English literature at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine, in 1972. After earning her bachelor of arts, she continued at the university to pursue graduate studies. In the mid-1970s, Lowry worked as a freelance writer and photographer.