Elizabeth Strout
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth Strout is an American author of fiction.

She was born in Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...

, and was raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. After graduating from Bates College
Bates College
Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...

, 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
Syracuse University College of Law
Syracuse University College of Law , founded in 1895, is a Juris Doctor degree-granting law school of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. It is one of only four law schools in Upstate New York Syracuse University College of Law (SUCOL), founded in 1895, is a Juris Doctor degree-granting 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, and continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook
Redbook
Redbook is an American women's magazine published by the Hearst Corporation. It is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.-History:...

and Seventeen
Seventeen (magazine)
Seventeen is an American magazine for teenagers. It was first published in September 1944 by Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications. News Corporation bought Triangle in 1988, and sold Seventeen to K-III Communications in 1991. Primedia sold the magazine to Hearst in 2003. It is still in the...

. It took her six or seven years to write 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 made into a television movie starring Elisabeth Shue
Elisabeth Shue
Elisabeth Judson Shue is an American actress and producer, most famous for her roles in the films The Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting, Cocktail, Back to the Future Parts II and III and Leaving Las Vegas, for which she won five acting awards and was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden...

 and was produced by Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

's studio, Harpo Films. She was a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...

) professor at Colgate University during the Fall Semester of 2007, where she taught creative writing at both the introductory and advanced level. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte
Queens University of Charlotte
Queens University of Charlotte is a private, co-educational, comprehensive university located in Charlotte, North Carolina. The school has approximately 2,600 undergraduate and graduate students through the College of Arts and Sciences, the McColl School of Business, the Wayland H. Cato, Jr. School...

 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...

 for Olive Kitteridge
Olive Kitteridge
Olive Kitteridge is a collection of stories by American author Elizabeth Strout. It covers 13 connected short stories about a woman named Olive and her immediate family and friends in the town of Crosby in coastal Maine. It is also known as On the Coast of Maine...

(2008), 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 in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy. She is the first American to win this award since Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

.

Strout is married to former Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

 Attorney General James Tierney, who currently serves as the Director of the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

. She divides her time between New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

and Maine.

Further reading

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