Author Biography

Laurie Halse Anderson is a New York Time Best Selling author who was born in 1961 in New York where she still lives today with her husband and four children. She has been interested in writing since the second grade and worked as a freelance reporter before becoming a published author.  Today, her books are well known and well loved. Since 1999 she has published more than twenty books for young adults and children. Anderson does the majority of her work in a log cabin built particularly for writing purposes. Clearly, this method of writing has proved quite fruitful.

When looking at a complete list of the works by Laurie Halse Anderson, two things are immediately clear. First, she is amazingly diverse, and second, she is not afraid to take on tough topics.

Her sporadic interests are clear in the works she produces, but all genres have been accepted with admiration by readers and critics alike. Anderson has published five young adult novels discussing such topics as eating disorders, rape and depression, three historical thrillers, one picture book about a girl with crazy hair, a ten book series of books about animals called Vet Volunteers, and two nonfiction books for children, one about the women of the American Revolution and another about the woman who saved Thanksgiving.

Her first young adult novel Speak features a teen girl struggling with a dark secret and the general hardships of teen life and is perhaps her best known work. Anderson proved her finesse at tackling the adolescent psyche by following Speak with four more poignant novels with both male and female protagonists. Her willingness to portray intense situations that other authors may shy away from is partly what has endeared her so strongly to young readers. She makes no attempts to sugar coat her stories for the sake of a happy ending; her stories all ring with authenticity. This authenticity, accompanied by her beautifully crafted prose, is what makes Anderson such a writing icon of our generation.