Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout
Strout at the 2015 Texas Book Festival
Born	Elizabeth Strout (1956-01-06) January 6, 1956[1] Portland, Maine
Occupation	Novelist Academic
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Bates College Syracuse University
Genre	Literary fiction
Notable works	Amy and Isabelle Abide with Me Olive Kitteridge The Burgess Boys My Name Is Lucy Barton
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 6 Emmy Awards Premio Bancarella Faulkner Award Bailey's Award
Spouse	James Tierney
Website
www.elizabethstrout.com

Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is an American novelist, academic, and short story writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine.^[2] The book has been adapted into an HBO miniseries that won six awards at the 2015 Primetime Emmy Awards.^[3]

She has written multiple award winning novels over her early career that include, Amy and Isabelle (1998), Abide with Me (2006), Olive Kitteridge (2008), The Burgess Boys (2013), and most recently, My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016).^[4] Her book, Amy and Isabelle was adapted as a television movie, starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.

Early life and education

Strout was born in Portland, Maine,^[5] and was raised in small towns in Maine and Durham, New Hampshire. Her father was a science professor, and her mother taught in a nearby high school.

Strout was interviewed by Terry Gross in January 2016^[6] wherein she said:

″I grew up in Durham, N.H. My parents were both professors at the university. My father was in the sciences. He was a parasitologist. He had his own lab that he ran. And my mother taught writing in the English Department, and she also taught writing in the high school. And we also lived in Maine on a dirt road where many of my relatives lived along that same dirt road.″

After graduating from Bates College, she spent a year in Oxford, England, followed by studies at law school for another year. In 1982, she graduated with honors, and received a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law. That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.^[5]

Career

Early career

Strout moved to New York City, where she waitressed and began developing early novels and stories to little success. She continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen. She enrolled in Law School at Syracuse University College of Law, and practiced law for six months before concluding her legal practice and focusing on her writing. In an interview with Terry Gross in January 2015 she said of the experience, "law school was more of an operation, I think."^[6] She stated in an interview with The Morning News,

I wanted to be a writer so much that the idea of failing at it was almost unbearable to me. I really didn’t tell people as I grew older that I wanted to be a writer—you know, because they look at you with such looks of pity. I just couldn’t stand that.^[7]

Amy and Isabelle

She worked for six or seven years to complete her book Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.^[5] Amy and Isabelle was adapted as a television movie, starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.^[5]

Teaching

Strout was a National Endowment for the Humanities lecturer at Colgate University during the Fall Semester of 2007, where she taught creative writing at both the introductory and advanced levels. She was also on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina.^[5]

Pulitzer Prize

In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine.^[2] In June 2010, Italian booksellers voted Olive Kitteridge and Strout as the winner of the Premio Bancarella award, at an event held in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy. The Burgess Boys, was published March 26, 2013, and her most recent novel, "My Name Is Lucy Barton," was published in January, 2016.^[5] The book enjoyed commercial success and Louisa Thomas of the New York Times stated,

The pleasure in reading Olive Kitteridge comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. And there are moments in which slipping into a character’s viewpoint seems to involve the revelation of an emotion more powerful and interesting than simple fellow feeling—a complex, sometimes dark, sometimes life-sustaining dependency on others. There’s nothing mawkish or cheap here. There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we can’t stand them.^[7]

Recent work

Strout published My Name Is Lucy Barton in 2016.^[8]

Personal life

Strout is married to former Maine Attorney General James Tierney. He serves as the Director of the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School. She divides her time between New York City and Maine.^[5]

Bibliography

Novels

• My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016)^[8]
• The Burgess Boys (2013)
• Olive Kitteridge (2008)
• Abide with Me (2006)
• Amy and Isabelle (1998)

Contributor

• The Friend Who Got Away (2005)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elizabeth Strout.