Writing for her 'ideal reader'

 

“I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.” – Elizabeth Strout

 

Born on Jan. 6, 1956 Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Olive Kitteridge – also a great HBO mini-series. 

 

Of course that’s not all this gifted New Englander has produced since she had her first short story published in 1982.   Strout grew up in New Hampshire and Maine where her father was a science professor, and her mother – who she said was a great inspiration for her writing – taught high school. 

 

I feel an affinity for Strout not only for the “growing up in a small town” connection, but also her slow and steady writing style producing 9 novels in 30 years (my pace and number).  Her latest is 2022's Lucy By The Sea, the fourth in her "Lucy Barton" series. 

 

Strout has spent most of her writing years in New York City, although she and husband James Tierney split their time between there and Maine, where he is the former Attorney General.  Her short stories and nonfiction pieces have been published in everything from literary magazines to Redbook and Seventeen.

  

“I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part,” she said of her award-winning work.  “But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.”