Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is an American novelist 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. The book has been adapted into an HBO miniseries that won six awards at the 2015 Primetime Emmy Awards.

Biography

Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and was raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. Her father was a science professor, and her mother taught high school. 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 both a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law and a Certificate of Gerontology from the Syracuse School of Social Work. That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.

Strout moved to New York City. She continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen.

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. Amy and Isabelle was adapted as a television movie, starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.

Strout was a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) professor 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.

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. 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.

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 and Maine.

Bibliography

Novels

• My Name is Lucy Barton (2016)
• The Burgess Boys (2013)
• Olive Kitteridge (2008)
• Abide with Me (2006)
• Amy and Isabelle (1998)

Contributor

• The Friend Who Got Away (2005)