Author
Elizabeth Strout
Birth Date
January 6, 1956
(70 Years)
Associated Country
United States
Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist celebrated for her emotionally nuanced fiction and deeply human portrayals of ordinary life. Raised in Maine and New Hampshire, Strout studied law before turning to writing full time. Her work often explores themes of family, loneliness, forgiveness, and personal connection, particularly within small-town New England settings.
Strout gained widespread recognition with her novel Olive Kitteridge (2008), a collection of interconnected stories centered on the complex character Olive Kitteridge. The book earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 and was later adapted into an acclaimed television miniseries. She continued Olive’s story in Olive, Again and also became known for her Lucy Barton series, beginning with My Name Is Lucy Barton.
In addition to her literary awards and critical acclaim, Strout is admired for her subtle prose, psychological insight, and compassionate treatment of her characters. Her novels capture the quiet struggles and relationships of everyday people, establishing her as one of the leading voices in contemporary American fiction.
Strout gained widespread recognition with her novel Olive Kitteridge (2008), a collection of interconnected stories centered on the complex character Olive Kitteridge. The book earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 and was later adapted into an acclaimed television miniseries. She continued Olive’s story in Olive, Again and also became known for her Lucy Barton series, beginning with My Name Is Lucy Barton.
In addition to her literary awards and critical acclaim, Strout is admired for her subtle prose, psychological insight, and compassionate treatment of her characters. Her novels capture the quiet struggles and relationships of everyday people, establishing her as one of the leading voices in contemporary American fiction.
Books
Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it...
Tell Me Everything 2025
With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton,...
Lucy by the Sea 2023
Lucy Barton, Book 4
As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the...
Oh William! 2022
Lucy Barton, Book 3
I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery...
Olive, Again 2020
Olive Kitteridge, Book 2
Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout...
Anything Is Possible 2018
Lucy Barton, Book 2
In Anything Is Possible, Elizabeth Strout explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One...
Lucy Barton, Book 1
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood...
The Burgess Boys 2014
Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could....
Olive Kitteridge 2008
Olive Kitteridge, Book 1
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in...
Abide With Me 2007
In the late 1950s, in a small New England town, Reverend Tyler Caskey has suffered a terrible loss and finds it hard to be the person he once was. He struggles to find the right words in his sermons...
Amy and Isabelle 1998
With compassion, humor, and striking insight, Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter.
Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in...