Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout qualified in law before she published any fiction. Her childhood was spent in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire, read English at Bates College, earned a J.D. at Syracuse in 1982 and spent a short spell in legal services before moving to New York. Amy and Isabelle (1998), about a mother and daughter shut in together in a mill town after a scandal, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Olive Kitteridge, thirteen linked stories circling a blunt retired schoolteacher on the Maine coast, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009; Olive, Again (2019) returns to her in old age and was picked for Oprah's Book Club. My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) is five days in a hospital room where Lucy's estranged mother sits by the bed and talks around everything that matters, and it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Lucy by the Sea (2022) moves Lucy and her former husband William up to the Maine coast through the pandemic lockdown. Strout divides her time between New York City and Brunswick, Maine.