OVERVIEW OF LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON’S LIFE AND WORK
Laurie Halse Anderson was bornOctober 23, 1961,
in Potsdam, New York,4 to Frank and JoyceHalse . According to Scholastic, her last name is pronounced like the word “waltz” and many people have trouble sayingit correctly!5 In an interview inThe New
YorkTimes, she said she was initially a struggling reader, but with helpat home and school, she becamean “omnivorous reader by fourth grade .”6 Although she showedan early interest in writing after being introduced to haiku poetry in the second grade, she didn’tinitially pursue writing, thinking she wouldbecome a doctor . During high school, she lived on a pig farm in Denmark for thirteen monthsas an exchange student. 7 After high school,she didn’t attend college right away, but she later attendedcommunity college and then transferred
to Georgetown University, receiving a degree in languages and linguistics in 1984 .8 Shesoon married and had two children. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she moved back to New York, settling in the town of Mexico . She later married her childhood sweetheart, Scott Larrabee . Togetherthey raised her two childrenand his two children .
Anderson began her career as a freelance writer forThePhiladelphia Enquirerwhile simultaneously working on novels for children and young adults.
She began publishing her work in 1996 . In additionto these works of fiction, she also wrote several non- fiction pieces. Her best-known work waspublished in 1999;Speak isa novel that was on theNew York Timesbestseller list and was adaptedinto a film starring Kristin Stewart in 2004 . This novel about a thirteen-year-old girl who refused to speak after she was sexually assaulted has beentranslated into sixteen languages .
Anderson turned tohistorical fiction in her next piece,writingFever 1793. She actually began researching the book in 1993after reading an article commemorating the 200th anniversaryof the epidemic,9 originallytitling itBitter Drops.10 The book was awarded the Best Books forYoung Adults recognition in 2001 .11 Thesetwo works, along with her next YA(young adult) novel,Catalyst,written in 2002 and sharing a setting with Speak,are the three books mentioned in connection with the Margaret A. Edwards Award, which she receivedin 2009 . The award “honors an author’s lifetime achievement for writing books that have been popular with teenagers .”12 To date, she has published nearly forty novels and has been awarded numeroushonors .
Laurie Halse Anderson lives in Philadelphia today and supports the need for diversity in publishing .13 In2015, she received the NationalIntellectual Freedom Award for her defense of adolescents’ rightto read, presented in Minneapolis,Minnesota, by the NCTE Standing Committee Against Censorship .14 When asked if she thought some of the passages in her books would causeproblems for readers, she said, “I feelvery strongly my responsibilityto write books that are honest and that present a way to find hope.
My characters haveto journey from darkness to light .”15 Certainly, the protagonist inFever,1793, Mattie, experiences this type of journeyas do many survivors of various illnesses throughout history .
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