Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson is an American author widely known for her contributions to young adult literature, particularly on the subjects of sexual assault, trauma, and recovery. She received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2023. She is the author of Speak (1999), a landmark novel about a teenager who is raped and struggles to speak about her trauma, which remains required reading in many schools. Anderson has also written the Shout (2019) verse memoir, which revisits and expands on the themes of Speak, and the historical novel Chains, which begins the Seeds of America trilogy about the Revolutionary War era as experienced by enslaved people. She has received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in young adult literature and has been a prominent public speaker on issues of sexual violence and trauma. She lives in Northern New York.