Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson has loved reading and writing since she was a young child, but she never envisioned herself becoming a writer. As a teenager, she participated in an exchange program and spent a year on a pig farm in Denmark. Upon her return to the U.S., Anderson attended community college and ultimately graduated from Georgetown University in 1984 with a degree in languages and linguistics. Following this, Anderson got a job as a journalist working for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She published her first novel in 1996 (Ndito Runs, about Kenyan Olympic marathon runners) but rose to fame in 1999 after publishing the young adult novel Speak. Speak, which is about a high school student who is sexually assaulted, is loosely autobiographical—Anderson later published a memoir, Shout, about the sexual violence she experienced as a high school student. Chains, and the other two novels in the Seeds of America Trilogy, have received major acclaim, with Chains winning the prestigious Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Anderson has been married twice; she is currently married to her high school sweetheart.