© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Writer Lois Lowry On 'The Giver'

courtesy: NEH

Acclaimed Newbery Award-winning children's author Lois Lowry's book for young people, The Giver, is now a film. 

"The Giver was the first book that I wrote that veered out of the realistic, and tiptoed a bit into fantasy. Some people call it science fiction. I don't like to think of it that way," Lowry tells our New Letters on the Air host Angela Elam.

"Because of what I set out to write about, I realized very early on that I had to set the book in the future," she says. "And therefore, it had to tread into that realm of fantasy, and speculative fiction, I suppose would be the best description."

One of the most challenged books in American libraries, Lowry talks about how The Giver has been banned and reads from the most controversial passage in this 2006 interview. 

Listen to the full interview here.

New Letters on the Air, public radio's longest-running literary program, is a half-hour program that is produced by New Letters magazine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Angela Elam, producer/host of UMKC's literary radio show New Letters on the Air has worked in public radio since 1988, but she got her start as a reader for Radio Deutsche Welle in Cologne, Germany in 1981.
KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and award-winning podcasts.
Your donation helps keep nonprofit journalism free and available for everyone.