Lois Lowry dreamed of being a professional writer since childhood. One marriage, two college degrees, and four kids later, she achieved that dream. Since then, she has written everything from fun and quirky to somber and serious.On her website, Ms Lowry says that her works, while different one from another in style and content, have essentially the same theme - the importance of human connections:
"the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment."
Born on March 20, 1937, Lois Lowry was the middle child of three. She first lived in Honolulu, Hawaii. Because her father was a career military dentist, the family moved to many other places: Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. Throughout her childhood, writing was her best subject in school, and she would fill notebooks with her own stories and poems.
In 1956, at nineteen, she left Brown University and married a Naval officer, which meant more moves and more additions to the list of places she has called home: California, Connecticut, Florida, South Carolina and Massachusetts.
She went back to school to earn her BA in English Literature from the University of Southern Maine in 1972, then went on to pursue graduate studies. It was during grad school that she discovered photography, using her photos to accompany the freelance writing she began after graduation. One article in Redbook magazine - written for adults, from the point of view of a child - caught the attention of a Houghton Mifflin editor, who encouraged her to write a children's book.
The result was her first children's book: A Summer to Die, published in 1977, and winner of the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award. Since then, she has continued writing for children, with over 30 books published to date. Her work has received many awards, including Newbery Medals for both Number the Stars (1990) and The Giver (1994).
Divorced since 1977, Lois Lowry and now divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an 1870's farmhouse in Maine.
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