Born: 6 January 1956, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Born in 1956, Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout didn’t publish her first book, Amy and Isabelle, until 1998. She had earned a Bachelor’s in English in 1977 and published her first short story in 1982, as well as earning a law degree. For more than a decade, she taught English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and had pieces published in various periodicals. Her bestselling debut, Amy and Isabelle, delves into the relationship between a mother and teen daughter after the girl is seduced by a teacher. She followed this with Abide with Me, about a reverend grieving the loss of his wife, in 2006.
Known for her insightful, empathetic depictions of humanity, Strout’s 2008 Olive Kitteridge contains 13 connected stories, with the title character being a small-town teacher who would later be portrayed by Frances McDormand when it was adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2014. The bestselling novel earned Strout a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, while the series won eight Emmys. She would publish a sequel, Olive, Again, in 2019. In the interim, she wrote The Burgess Boys (2013), about two brothers trying to help their sister and nephew, who has been charged with a hate crime. Her Amgash series started with 2016’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was adapted into a stage play that premiered in London in 2018 and debuted on Broadway in 2020, starring Laura Linney in a Tony-nominated performance. The popular series continued with Anything Is Possible (2017), Oh William (2021), and Lucy by the Sea (2022), while Tell Me Everything (2024) brought together Olive, Lucy, and Bob Burgess as they struggled to be understood and find meaning in life.
“It is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that interests me as a writer, but the murkiness of human experience and the consistent imperfections of our lives,” Strout has said.