Lois Lowry on The Giver, friendship, and writing at 87
A Q&A with the famous Newbery Award-winning author
“My ambition now is to continue to produce work of some literary merit which will speak in a soft and meaningful whisper to some young people.” —
It’s funny how an interaction with a famous author is so exciting, like seeing your favorite teacher in the aisle of the grocery store and realizing that they are a real person. So when famed children’s author
subscribed to this newsletter recently, I rushed to tell my two grown daughters, both of whom read and loved what is perhaps her bestselling book, The Giver1, first published in 1993. The second thing I did, nervously, was to send Lois an email asking if she’d be open to doing a Q&A. Her prompt reply was, “Sure, happy to. I’m stuck at home with a virus and need something to do.” That kind of straightforward talk, which blends fact and feeling, is what makes Lois such an exceptional writer for both children and adults. Of course, I was thrilled by her responses. I know you will be, too.DW: Lois, you’re 87. What’s your favorite part of reaching [b]old age? What’s the biggest surprise?
LL: My favorite part of my life as it is today is the quality and variety and depth of my friendships. I live next door (in my retirement community) to a woman who has been a friend since 1960. (As I was typing that sentence, I got a text from her, with today’s WORDLE score; we compare those each morning). We had babies at the same time and now those babies are retiring from their own careers; she and I have a lot of history together and we savor those memories.
But other friends are newer and younger and also important to me. One thing I like about my (old) self is that I have not closed myself off from contemporary trends. I have young friends (and grandchildren) with tattoos, for example, and though I am not above an occasional eye-roll, I am not judgmental. Times…and tastes…change, and I watch the changes with interest and amusement.
Biggest surprise (though it shouldn’t have been) is the too-frequent-now death of people I love. No way around that, at my age. Still, I hate it.
DW: Where do you live now (summer and winter) and how does that impact your writing? Describe the view from your current writing desk, or several, if you live in more than one place.
LL: I actually live in three places, which seems excessive…and which is, in fact, a nuisance just in logistical terms: the schlepping stuff from one place to another, or the annoying awareness that the blue sweater you planned on wearing is actually in one of the other houses. But here is how it came about:
Twenty-some years ago, in a different life, I bought an old run-down farmhouse in western Maine as a weekend retreat. I’ve spent years—and a lot of $$$—restoring and renovating and maintaining it, and it is the place I provably love most in this world.
Then, in 2011, at age 74, I was widowed. For a while I remained in my large Cambridge, MA house, alone there with a dog. But it seemed wise, eventually, to sell the house and move to a retirement community in Maine, where I had a son and several grandchildren. So I did that in 2013 (now age 76) and acquired a wonderful small cottage with a garden and congenial neighbors and a lot of services provided. But of course I kept the farm…now just 35 miles west…and went there summers, with my dog, and always many visitors.
But…here comes the unexpected! A few months after I was widowed, an acquaintance in Cambridge, a retired doctor, was also widowed. Later, In 2013, the same year that I moved north, he and I had dinner together one night and ended up closing the restaurant as our conversation went on and on…and on...and on…
And he had a summer home just 10 miles from my Maine farmhouse. So our dinners became frequent, and we became fixtures in each other’s lives.
Eventually he turned his summer home over to his kids, and he moved into my place. And into the retirement community as well, where we now spend a month each spring and a month each fall. BUT he also had a place on the west coast of Florida. So now I head south with Howard each November and return to Maine in May.
As for the view you asked about? There’s a perfectly decent view in each of my three dwelling places. But the best, the one I treasure, is at the farm, where I look out over flower gardens and meadows, where I frequently watch deer grazing, and have on occasion also seen a coyote and a bear (not at the same time!).
The dog, alas, has died. It’s one of my few regrets about my age: no matter how much you want to, you do not get a puppy. Bad enough that your kids will outlive you and clink their wine glasses and say nostalgically, “Remember when Mom…” But a golden retriever looking mournful when he hears your name? Nope. Not fair.
DW: Who is the first person who encouraged you to write? Why children’s literature?
LL: I was fortunate to be born to a mother who valued books and literature, who read to me when I was young, who was creative and imaginative as well, and who encouraged creativity of all kinds.
For many years I kept a paper that I’d written during my senior year in high school; the teacher—Mrs. Katherine Clingan—had written on it: Be sure to keep on writing. I think there’s a real chance you can do something with it.
I don’t think anyone, including myself, had thought in terms of “children’s literature.” But as it happened, a children’s book editor sought me out after reading a magazine piece I’d published, and asked if I would consider writing a book for “young readers.” And I had a personal memory, the death of my sister when we were both young, that needed a place to be told. When I wrote that book, which was eventually titled A Summer to Die, it was personally very satisfying. But also, it received a very positive response—reviews, some awards—and made me aware that I had an audience out there, waiting.
DW: If you can, tell us how you got the idea for The Giver in 1948 when you were eleven and joining your father in Japan with your mother, sister, and brother.
LL: Ideas for fiction come from many different sources and merge together when I actually sit down to write. But your question refers to something specific that I think I talked about in the Newbery acceptance speech for that book. It had to do with the fact that my family moved to Tokyo after WWII. Japan was a devastated country at that time; parts of Tokyo were rubble; the city had been bombed and burned, and the people were desperately poor. (It is, of course, very different today; I’ve been back several times and am amazed each time at its modernity and sophistication.)
My father, who had entered Japan at the end of the war and was on the staff of the American hospital in Tokyo, had arranged for us to live in a hastily-built compound called Washington Heights: American style houses, a little movie theater and supermarket, etc… an odd reproduction of a small American town right there in the center of Tokyo.
When I began school there at age 11, in the American school, I found that many of my classmates lived in Japanese houses within the larger community (of course these houses, I am now aware, had been commandeered from the wealthy Japanese). The daily lives of those kids, I realized, were far richer and more interesting than mine because of their daily exposure to a different culture and language. I envied them.
Much later, as an adult, I asked my parents why they had made the choice to live in that walled-in compound and they explained that it felt “safer, more comfortable.” I guess that is understandable but nonetheless I regretted…still regret…that they made that choice.
However, I did have a bicycle. And the wall around Washington Heights did not have a locked gate. I was not imprisoned there. And in the years I lived here, ages 11, 12, 13, again and again I rode my bike out into the Japanese community and explored, observed, was fascinated by “the other.” I would not have been able to articulate this at that age but I realize now that I was escaping the “sameness” that my parents felt was safe and comfortable, in order to experience the unknown: the diversity that enriches and educates the world.
My memories of those years were part of what went into the creation of The Giver.
DW: Was it a surprise to win the Newbery Medal (“The most distinguished contribution to American Literature for Children”) in 1990 for Number the Stars and again in 1994 for The Giver? Were you (are you) comfortable with fame?
LL: Yes, of course I was surprised each time. It was very humbling and gratifying.
Fame, though? Fortunately, writers are generally not recognized. People don’t stop you on the street and ask for an autograph or a selfie. (I have found myself at lunch in a restaurant with a “famous” person and our conversation was interrupted again and again by strangers approaching our table. He was unfailingly polite and gracious to them but it was incredibly intrusive and annoying.) The name, though, sometimes rings that bell; just last summer when I was hospitalized with Covid in Wyoming, a nurse came in wearing full protective gear to ask for an autograph…not so easy when there are IV’s in the backs of each hand.
It comes as an amusing surprise to find myself occasionally a NYT crossword puzzle clue, or a Jeopardy answer.
I don’t mind the mail from strangers and now and then I embark on a prolonged email correspondence with someone because we have interests in common. But “fame”… the kind of fame that afflicts celebrities…is not something I wish for or care about.
DW: You are also a New York Times bestselling author. Has your writing process changed as the years have passed? Has it been hard to live up to expectations from the writing awards you received when you were in your 40s?
LL: “Bestselling” is meaningless if what is being sold is of no value. My satisfaction—this is hard to explain—comes from arranging words on a page: from the cadence of them, the way their meaning shifts and surprises, the possibilities that they present and the secrets they can impart. Those things have not changed for me over the nearly 50 years since my first book was published.
I don’t feel any expectations beyond what I have always expected, or hoped for, from myself.
I was both surprised and grateful when my first book, A Summer to Die, won a major award back in 1977. I was surprised and grateful when in 2021 On the Horizon, similarly, won a major award.
Nothing has changed, not in my writing process, not in my expectations, not in my gratitude.
DW: Have your priorities about writing vs. life (your family and your partner) changed in recent years?
LL: My top priority will always be the people I love, and their well-being. I’m very fortunate in that those same people are understanding about my need for solitude and introspection. I’ve become slightly less of an introvert as the years have passed, but I will never be gregarious; I’d rather be an observer, a ponderer.
DW: Do you consider yourself ambitious? Has your ambition changed as you’ve gotten older?
LL: …I confess; before attempting to answer this question, I looked up the word ‘ambitious’ because I wanted to be certain we were talking about the same thing. And I encountered go-getting, ruthless, striving, pushy, motivated, aspiring…some of those are pretty negative adjectives that don’t seem to bear any resemblance to me. I certainly am motivated, though. And there was a time when I was aspiring. The rest of it? Not so much.
Back in the 1970s (my first book was published in 1977) I was motivated…therefore, I guess, ambitious…because I had to make a living. I was divorced at age 40 and ended up with no money, no income, and like many women of my generation, no credentials for getting a job. College drop-out. Wife and mother. That was it, for me.
I was fortunate that I began to earn a small income from writing. And it grew as time passed. Eventually the aspirations and ambition born of necessity faded and I suppose, looking back now, that it morphed into the hope that I could do something of value beyond the paying of bills. I still hope for that. My ambition now is to continue to produce work of some literary merit which will speak in a soft and meaningful whisper to some young people. Like everyone, I hope to leave something by which I will be remembered.
Has that ambition changed as I’ve grown older? It is no longer tainted by the need to produce income; understandably, that kind of need impels all of us to compromise at times.
DW: What is your morning routine? Do you have a writing ritual to get started? Do you journal? Do you write every day?
LL: Like so many of us I play WORDLE and CONNECTIONS over coffee in the morning. I look briefly at the TV news, groaning. I mutter some expletives describing how I feel about Donald Trump. Next I go to my computer, where I follow up on the news; I subscribe to the NY Times and the Washington Post online. Then I turn to the mail (by which, of course, I mean the email). It seems endless. But I try to pay careful and caring attention to each individual.
I always have some writing project in the works; usually, more than one. It is very very rare for me to have a deadline; such things occur only when I have agreed to write an article or essay for some publication. Those with deadlines I tend to promptly; I don’t think I’ve ever asked for an extension; when I need to, I can turn something out very quickly.
Fiction? I’m more leisurely. A lot of “fiction time” is spent in my head, not at the keyboard. Sometimes ideas will percolate, partly-done, for very long periods, during which I re-visit them occasionally. I’ll eventually deem some hopeless, or perhaps outdated, and throw them away. Others have languished for years and then taken on a new life and been eventually published.
DW: Looking back, what is one thing you are especially proud of?
LL: Without question, my grandchildren. I have four, and each one is now an adult and a thriving, honorable, intelligent, kind person. I had nothing to do with any of that (except perhaps to contribute a little genetic material) and so there is no reason for me to be “proud”…. But nonetheless I am immensely gratified to watch the decisions that they make, the obstacles they overcome.
DW: What is your biggest regret when it comes to life or writing?
LL: Writing? No regrets.
Life? I should never have bought a pasta machine.
Thank you, Lois, for taking the time to write these wonderful responses. They make us understand what it really means to lead a writing life. - Debbie
Readers, if you appreciated this Q&A, please give it a “heart” or leave a comment below. Your thoughts and “likes” add so much.
Questions for readers…
Do you have any writing regrets? (Or pasta machine regrets?)
If you’re creative, who do you hope your work will speak to?
The Giver was one of the first books I truly loved. It opened my eyes to so much, it broke my heart, and it changed me for the better. What a trip to hear from Lois Lowry all these years later, and how wonderful to hear that she is happy, healthy, and thriving! All I can say is thank you, Lois, you're a true gem. And thank you, Debbie, for asking these incredible questions and knocking another Q&A with a [b]old woman out of the park!
I don’t know Lois’s work but loved her warmth, honesty and sense of perspective. Understanding how others live their lives is helpful in the living of my own as each day becomes more precious. As for a dog in one’s 80s, I knew a widow who brought her last pup home to a condo when she was in her late 80s. She was able to housetrain the puppy and involved her niece in his care so that she could take over when the time came. Joan got to continue loving a dog, and the dog was assured of a loving home after her death.