Author Crush Month: Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry is one of those rare authors who writes very well on a variety of interesting and unique subjects, from true events such as the evacuation of Jews from Nazi-held Denmark to the imaginary utopian world of the Giver, to the absolutely-true stories of Gooney Bird Greene (which my daughter just loves).

Best of all, for us writers, is her book of memories called Looking Back. Lots of pictures, lots of thoughts about those pictures, and mixed in between are glimpses into the mind of a writer.

It is about moments, memories, fragments, falsehoods, and fantasies. It is about things that happened, which caused other things to happen, so that eventually stories emerged.

And after reading her blog below, my author crush just got bigger.

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My kids—all middle-aged adults now!—remember that when they were teenagers, I carved out a little spot, a corner of the room that we had thought of as their lawyer father’s den. There was a wall of bookcases in that room, and their dad’s very large desk. Then—to everyone’s surprise—I bought a second-hand table, quite small, which fit into the corner. I set on it the portable electric typewriter that my father had given me for my 35^th birthday (to replace the manual typewriter he had given me for my 13th) and declared the space mine.

Many years later my older daughter told me that she, a budding feminist of 15 at the time, thought my carved-out corner was both poignant and pathetic.

I suppose it was, in a way. But it was so important to me. It was the first space I had ever claimed as my own. I had married at 19, was a mother at 20—and a mother of four by 25. Like all wives and mothers, I had put my own professional dreams on hold, had seen my husband through law school, had changed diapers and packed lunches and done laundry and made dinners and read bedtime stories (and had even gone back to finish college). Then, one day, I plugged in that typewriter, hung my sweater on the back of that uncomfortable wooden chair, and announced: “This is mine.”

That was thirty-eight years ago. The kids are grown, the husband is an ex, and I have lived in seven different apartments, condos and houses since then. In each of them I have set a typewriter—later a computer—on a desk and declared that space sacrosanct.

I am looking at that space as I write this. This desk—probably my terminal desk!—is very large. And cluttered! Spread out in front of me are the computer, the scanner, the printer, the phone. The tax files (business travel, cell phone, postage, secretarial, etc.) upright in their holder (making me feel efficient even if I am not). The coffee mugs filled with pens and markers and scissors: one mug is from a public elementary school, one from a private boys’ school, one from the New Hampshire Writing Project; and one from the USAF Fighter Weapons School has a golden picture of a sleek jet on it—and my son’s name, the son I lost in just such a plane.

I see on my desk an advanced readers’ copy of my yet-to-be released book The Birthday Ball, and the stack of research from Like the Willow Tree, set in rural Maine in 1919 and due to be published next year as part of the Dear America series; and some sample illustrations from a Gooney Bird in the works. A stack of letters from kids. There’s a glass jar of Atomic Fireballs given to me by my friend, writer Susan Goodman.

There are framed photographs of friends. Ashley Bryan (and there’s a not-yet-answered letter from Ashley on my desk, too); Trina Schart Hyman, with whom I was going to do a book, and then cancer swooped in and snatched her (but I’ve written her in as a character in a new, not-yet-published book called Bless This Mouse); Carol Otis Hurst, story-teller extraordinaire, also gone too soon, and her funny e-mails are still in my computer; and Annelise Platt, whose Danish childhood formed the basis for Number the Stars.

On a shelf nearby, part of a crammed-full floor-to-ceiling bookcase, are volumes of poetry. I begin my days by reading the poets I most love: Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Jane Kenyon, others. I am not a poet myself. But reading their work reminds me of how language is best used: with cadence, nuance, mystery, and metaphor.

Not much of what I’ve described falls into the category of “writing tools.” But all of it does, really: the memories, the connections, the thousands and thousands of words that affect me, that I savor and wonder at and think about each day.

And I have a comfortable chair, now. It swivels and tilts and twirls. So different from the stiff ladderback that I placed in front of the little table in the corner once!  But it wasn’t the chair, or the corner, that mattered then, or that matters now, really. It’s the feeling of the space, and the sanctity of what can happen here.

Lois Lowry

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Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, author Lois Lowry has lived all over the world. She attended elementary school Pennsylvania, junior high school in Japan, high school in New York, and college in Rhode Island and Maine. Currently she divides her time between her residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts and an 18th-century farmhouse in rural Maine.

Twice the recipient of the Newbery Medal, given each year for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature by an American author, Lowry has also received countless other honors for her work.

Her 35 books have been translated into over twenty languages, and in 1996 her novel The Giver, called in translation Le Passeur, was chosen by the children of Belgium and France as their favorite.

In addition, several books have been adapted for film and stage.

She is a mother and grandmother and has worked as a photojournalist as well as a writer of fiction.