mfawriting: Elizabeth Strout Interview

Elizabeth Strout discusses Olive Kitteridge, Amy & Isabelle, and Abide with Me, as well as how she got started and narrative voice. Interviewed by Magdalene Brandeis, faculty coordinator at Stony Brook Manhattan.

A story is only going to become a story when it finds its shape. And voice. For me, it can't be planned.

—Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout Interview
Interview by Magdalene Brandeis
mfawriting: Stony Brook Southampton MFA Program in Writing and Literature YouTube channel
January 18, 2011

Syracuse.com: 'Olive Kitteridge' author Elizabeth Strout delivers final Gifford lecture of 2010

She spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of fans of her work about her childhood, her time in Syracuse as a Syracuse University law student, why she believes fiction is important and her writing process.

'Olive Kitteridge' author Elizabeth Strout delivers final Gifford lecture of 2010
Emily Kulkus
Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard
December 22, 2010

Olive Kitteridge Wins Italy's Premio Bancarella Award

Italian edition of Olive Kitteridge, published by Fazi.

200 Italian booksellers voted Olive Kitteridge and Elizabeth winner of the Premio Bancarella award in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy.  Elizabeth scored 100 votes of 187 cards received, surpassing the five other finalists books: Love SOS by Federica Bosco (Newton Compton) by 31 votes, The Box of Socks Lost by Vauro Senesi (Piemme) by 28 votes,   The National Mean by Mimmo Gangemi (Einaudi) by 16 votes, The Murderess Leaves Something  by Rose Mogliasso (Salani) by 7 votes, and Confession by Bill James (Seller) by five votes.

Honorary Degree from Bates College

On May 30, Elizabeth was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from her alma mater, Bates College, at the college’s 144th commencement ceremony.  

From the President’s Conferral:

Elizabeth Strout, your eye for the telling detail, your feel for the undercurrents of human relationships, and your ability to shape words into worlds that live vividly on the page have made you one of the outstanding novelists of our time. Therefore, by the authority vested in me by the Board of Trustees, I hereby confer upon you the degree Doctor of Letters, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities which here and everywhere pertain to this degree.

Read the full Citation and President’s Conferral ▸

A video of Elizabeth's remarks:

"The best part of what waits for you is that liberating prize of life, those remarkable moments when we understand that we are not the most important person in the world. The man on the side of the road is. The person on the airplane suffering is."

Read Elizabeth’s commencement speech ▸

WaPo: Fiction Pulitzer Prize Winner Elizabeth Strout Talks Writing, 'Olive Kitteridge'

On the way to writing "Olive Kitteridge," the collection of linked stories that would win her a 2009 Pulitzer Prize, Elizabeth Strout made one of those intuitive leaps that show why the creation of fiction is such a mysterious enterprise.

Fiction Pulitzer Prize Winner Elizabeth Strout Talks Writing, 'Olive Kitteridge'
Bob Thompson
The Washington Post
August 4, 2009