Lois Lowry

Biography

Lois Lowry was born Cena Hammersberg (but her name was soon changed to Lois Ann Hammersberg) in Hawaii on March 20, 1937. She grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan, the middle child of three. She was a solitary child who grew up in a world of books and imagination. Her family’s travels stemmed from her father’s position as an army dentist, where he was assigned to different parts of the world. She went to high school in New York and then attended Brown University in Rhode Island to major in writing.

At age nineteen, after her sophomore year in college, Lowry married a navy officer named Donald Grey Lowry. They had four children. She said their escapades during childhood and adolescence gave her book material for young people for years. Lowry returned to college at the University of Southern Maine and attended graduate school after getting her degree in 1972. The marriage ended in 1977, when she was forty years old. That same year, Lowry met Martin Small, with whom she was romantically involved until his death in 2011.

As a child, Lowry scribbled stories and poems in notebooks. She began writing professionally after going back to college when her children were still young. Her first earnings went to hire a housekeeper, so she could spend more time writing.

She has written more than thirty books for children and young adults, starting with A Summer to Die (1977), a fictionalized account of the early death of her sister, who died of cancer, and the effect of the loss on the family. Her protagonist is a thirteen-year-old girl who both loves and resents the older sister before learning that the sister is dying. The book won the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award for 1978 and was placed on the School Library Journal’s “Best of the Best 1966–1978” list in 1979.

Three more of Lowry’s books were named as American Library Association Notable Children’s Books: Anastasia Krupnik (1979), Autumn Street (1979), and Anastasia Again! (1981). In 1983, Anastasia Again! was nominated for an American Book Award in the paperback children’s fiction category. The various adventures of Anastasia Krupnik and her brother Sam spanned more than a dozen books over more than fifteen years.

Number the Stars (1989) has a completely different setting but features the same theme of the role people play in the lives of others. It depicts young people during the Danish resistance movement in World War II. It won a Newbery Medal, the Sidney Taylor Award from the National Jewish Libraries, and the National Jewish Book Award in 1990. Lowry also received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader’s Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She won the Ludington Award for her writing in 1998. Her book Rabble Starkey (1987) won the Child Study Award from the Children’s Book Committee of Bank Street College in 1987. The Giver (1993) brought her another Newbery Medal and quickly became a classic of young-adult literature.

The Giver was to be the first of a series, followed by Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012), also set in the same world as the original. Considered a dystopian allegory, The Giver broaches such controversial subjects as authoritarianism, euthanasia, emerging sexuality, and suicide. It has frequently been challenged or banned in schools, mainly for its violence or because parents claimed that it was unsuited for the age group. Previously adapted for the stage, a film adaptation of The Giver, directed by Phillip Noyce, was released in August 2014. It was a commercial success, grossing $45 million in Canada and the United States, but received mixed critical reviews.

Lowry also penned the Tate trilogy, about bickering siblings dealing with the realities of a blended family, and the humorous Gooney Bird series, about an offbeat second grader. She is also a photographer, specializing in photographing children; a photographic memoir of hers, Looking Back, was published in 1998. In addition to her novels, she wrote several textbooks, such as Black American Literature (1973) and Literature of the American Revolution (1974), and published articles in a number of magazines, including Redbook, Yankee, and Downeast.

In 2020, she released an eighty-page collection of poetry On the Horizon, centered on the attack on Pearl Harbor. During the same year, she released her novel The Willoughbys Return, a sequel to 2008's The Willoughbys. Netflix made the original into an animated film in 2022. In 2023, she published the novel The Windeby Puzzle, while in 2024 she released Tree. Table. Book.

Lowry considered Howard Corwin, a retired physician who died in 2025, her life partner. They spent part of their time in Maine, dividing it between Portland and a 1768 farmhouse. In the winter, they lived in Naples, Florida.

Bibliography

“Biography.” Lois Lowry, loislowry.com/biography. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Blatt, Ben. “Why Do So Many Schools Try to Ban The Giver?” Slate, 14 Aug. 2014, slate.com/culture/2014/08/the-giver-banned-why-do-so-many-parents-try-to-remove-lois-lowrys-book-from-schools.html. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Hornaday, Ann. “‘The Giver’ Movie Review: Lois Lowry’s Award-Winning Novel Comes to Life.” Review of The Giver, directed by Phillip Noyce. The Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/the-giver-movie-review-lois-lowrys-award-winning-novel-comes-to-life/2014/08/11/f731daec-2167-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Howard, Jennifer. “War and Remembrance: New Novels by Lois Lowry and Gayle Foreman.” The New York Times, 26 July 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/07/26/books/review/lois-lowry-tree-table-book-gayle-forman-not-nothing.html. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Kois, Dan. “The Children’s Author Who Actually Listens to Children.” The New York Times, 3 Oct. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magazine/lois-lowry-the-childrens-author-who-actually-listens-to-children.html. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Simmons, Florence. “Lois Lowry to Librarians: ‘There Is No One Whom I Admire More.’” School Library Journal, 17 Apr. 2024, www.slj.com/story/lois-lowry-to-librarians-there-is-no-one-whom-I-admire-more. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Ulaby, Neda. “Lois Lowry Says ‘The Giver’ Was Inspired by Her Father’s Memory Loss.” NPR Weekend Edition Saturday, 2014, www.npr.org/2014/08/16/340170478/lois-lowry-says-the-giver-was-inspired-by-her-fathers-memory-loss. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.

Waldman, Katy. “What Lois Lowry Remembers.” The New Yorker, 26 Dec. 2021, www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/what-lois-lowry-remembers. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.