About the Author
Laurie Anderson is the author of the book Speak. Her full name is Laurie Halse Anderson and she was born on October 23, 1961 in Potsdam, New York. She first published the book Speak in 1999, but was also recognized for her books Fever, Catalyst, Twisted and Wintergirls. Speak is her best known book.
Mrs. Anderson reads all of the e-mails and letters sent to her from her teenager fans. Then, she will reply to them by writing books about the letter or e-mail. She also takes her writing very seriously. However, Mrs. Anderson wishes she could write about lighter topics. When Laurie was younger she enjoyed writing, plus she loved reading science fiction as a teenager.
Currently, Mrs. Anderson lives in upstate New York with her family and has four kids. She enjoys running for therapeutic release. Running helps her write, sleep and eat and she says it makes her a nicer person. She loves to run with her second husband, Scot Larrabee, now that all of her kids are grown up.
"Speak is her first novel and arguably her most famous
book (so far). The story is narrated by fourteen-year-old Melinda Sordino as she
suffers through her first year of high school carrying around an awful secret.
In an interview, Anderson talks about how Melinda was created: One
night, Anderson woke to the sound of "a girl sobbing." She thought it was one
of her daughters – but no. They were safe and sleeping. Anderson realized "The
crying girl [was] in my head, a bad dream." Like readers of Speak,
Anderson didn't know right away why Melinda was upset. Anderson says,
"It wasn't until [Melinda] was comfortable with me that she let her secret out"
("Laurie Halse Anderson speaks about SPEAK" in Speak: 10th Anniversary
Edition).