Lois Lowry - Biography
Lois Lowry was born Lois Ann Hammersberg on March 20, 1937, in Honolulu, Hawaii. She decided to become a writer by the time she was nine years old. As the child of an Army officer, she lived in many places growing up, including Japan and New York City. She spent two years studying at Brown University before meeting her husband Donald Lowry. Since he too was in the military, after they married, she continued to live in many places. After having four children, she finally earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Maine in the early 1970s. |
Lowry published her first novel in 1977, A Summer to Die, a novel based on her own experience of losing her older sister. In 1979, the novel Autumn Street was her first novel about a war, again drawing from personal experience of living with her grandparents while her father was in the military during WWII. But, it was her historical novel Number the Stars, published in 1989 that changed her career. She received her first Newberry Award for this novel, receiving another in 1994 with the publication of The Giver. She has continued to produce novels, with her most recent title published in 2013.
Lois Lowry is also a photographer. The covers of both The Giver and Number the Stars contain examples of her work.