Laurie Halse Anderson – laureate 2023 1
Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award hurting them. My f
ather was a war veteran and turned to alcohol to help cope with his bad memories. He lost his job and we had to move several times. In the middle of all that, when I was 13, I was raped and I didn’t tell anybody about it. Many of my books are banned in the US because some people feel that children shouldn’t read about these hard things. But to try to protect children from the reality of the world makes them vulnerable. The yearning for love and belonging is a recurring theme in your books. How come? I think that every child and every teenager feels that in their hearts, that it’s a human need. If you’re writing about kids or teenagers, and you want to reflect real experience, you have to write about the need and hunger for love and belonging. Your YA novels are all narrated in the first person. Why did you choose this narrative style? There’s an immediacy, a certain power, in a first-person narrative, and as a teenager I think it’s much easier to understand another person’s experiences if the story is told from that person’s perspective. What do you do if you get writer’s block? Writer’s block is always a sign that I need to exercise. That it’s time to go for a walk or a run, or to ride my bike. If I move my body, my mind starts to flow again! Why is literature for children and young people important? Because children are more important than adults! I believe that every generation tries to make it better for the generation that follows and to prepare our children for the world that they will inherit. Giving them the best stories is a way of doing that. What does the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award mean to you? It means that my work has been recognized and lifted to a height that I could never have imagined. Astrid Lindgren herself is a superhero of children’s literature, both in terms of the joy she’s brought to children around the world with her stories, but also how she used her visibility to advocate for children around the world. To be honored with a memorial in her name is the greatest honor I’ve had, and will ever have. There’s nothing beyond this. Read a longer interview with Laurie Halse Anderson on alma.se/en 12