Elizabeth Strout

Strout grew up in small towns across Maine and New Hampshire, the daughter and granddaughter of judges and academics, and worked briefly as a lawyer before abandoning the profession entirely to write fiction, publishing her first novel only in her forties.

Olive Kitteridge, a novel-in-stories that circles a difficult, often unlikable retired teacher through her Maine coastal town, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 and was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand.

She has continued the character across a sequel, Olive, Again, alongside other Maine-set fiction, remaining closely identified with the small-town New England world of her childhood.