Lois Lowry has written more than 20 books for young readers and received many citations and awards, including Newbery Medals for her novels Number the Stars (1989) and The Giver (1993). Lowry was born in Hawaii and lived in New York, Pennsylvania and Tokyo, Japan before settling in New York for high school. She attended Brown University, but dropped out to get married and start a family. The mother of four children, she completed her college education in Maine and worked as a writer and photographer. Since the 1970s she has published novels known for expressing realistic life experiences, including the trilogy The Giver, Gathering Blue and Messenger and the Anastasia Krupnik series of books. Some of her other books are A Summer to Die (1977), Autumn Street (1979) and Rabble Starkey (1987). She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.