Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry
Lowry at the 2016 Texas Book Festival
Born	Lois Ann Hammersberg (1937-03-20) March 20, 1937 (age 79) Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Period	1977–2016
Genre	Children's literature, fantasy
Notable works	The Giver Number the Stars
Notable awards	Newbery Medal 1990, 1994 Margaret Edwards Award 2007
Spouse	Donald Grey Lowry (1956-1977; divorced; 4 children, 2 sons and 2 daughters)
Website
www.loislowry.com

Lois Lowry (born Lois Ann Hammersberg; March 20, 1937) is an American writer credited with more than thirty children's books. She has won two Newbery Medals, for Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1994. For her contribution as a children's writer, she was a finalist in 2000 and U.S. nominee again in 2004, as well as a finalist in 2016 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. Her book Gooney Bird Greene won the 2002 Rhode Island Children's Book Award. In 2007 she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her contribution in writing for teens. In 2011 she gave the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture; her lecture was titled "UNLEAVING: The Staying Power of Gold". She was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Brown University in 2014.

As an author, Lowry is known for writing about difficult subject matters within her works for children. She has explored such complex issues as racism, terminal illness, murder, and the Holocaust among other challenging topics. She has also explored very controversial issues of questioning authority such as in The Giver quartet. Her writing on such matters has brought her both praise and criticism. In particular, her work The Giver, the first novel in The Giver quartet, has been met with a diversity of reactions from schools in America, some of which have adopted it as a part of the mandatory curriculum, while others have prohibited the book's inclusion in classroom studies. A film adaptation of The Giver was released in 2014.

Lowry was born on March 20, 1937, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to parents Katherine Gordon Landis and Robert E. Hammersberg. Her father was of Norwegian descent and her mother had German, English, and Scots-Irish ancestry. Initially, Lowry's parents named her "Cena" for her Norwegian grandmother but upon hearing this, her grandmother telegraphed and instructed Lowry's parents that the child should have an American name. Her parents chose the names Lois and Ann, which were the names of her father's sisters.