Publication Order of Olive Kitteridge Books
| Olive Kitteridge | 2008 |
| Olive, Again | 2019 |
Publication Order of Lucy Barton Books
| My Name Is Lucy Barton | 2016 |
| Anything Is Possible | 2017 |
| Oh William! | 2021 |
| Lucy by the Sea | 2022 |
| Tell Me Everything | 2024 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Amy and Isabelle | 1998 |
| Abide with Me | 2006 |
| The Burgess Boys | 2013 |
| The Things We Never Say | 2026 |
About Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist, born in Portland, Maine, in 1956, much of whose fiction is set in her home state. She won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Olive Kitteridge” and is also known for her series of novels about Lucy Barton.
Strout grew up in small towns in Maine and in Durham, New Hampshire, the daughter of two teachers: her father was a science professor and her mother taught English. After Bates College and a year in Oxford she took a law degree at Syracuse University in 1982, the year her first story was published in New Letters magazine. She practised law for six months, then moved to New York. While teaching part-time at Borough of Manhattan Community College she spent six or seven years on her first novel, “Amy and Isabelle” (1998), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and made into a television film starring Elisabeth Shue.
“Abide with Me” followed in 2006, and “Olive Kitteridge” in 2008. A book of connected stories about a woman, her family and her neighbours on the coast of Maine, it was adapted by HBO in 2014 as a miniseries with Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins, which won eight Emmy Awards. A sequel, “Olive, Again”, was published in 2019.
After “The Burgess Boys” (2013), Strout wrote “My Name Is Lucy Barton” (2016), in which a woman recovering from an operation is visited by her estranged mother. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. “Anything Is Possible” (2017), linked stories about the town Lucy came from, won The Story Prize. Lucy returned in “Oh William!” (2021), shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, and in “Lucy by the Sea” (2022), set in Maine during the pandemic. “Tell Me Everything” (2024) brings Lucy together with Olive Kitteridge and Bob Burgess in the town of Crosby, Maine.
Her most recent novel, “The Things We Never Say”, was published in May 2026. It leaves her recurring characters behind for Artie Dam, a history teacher in a coastal Massachusetts town in 2024, and was shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. Strout is married to James Tierney, a former Attorney General of Maine, and divides her time between New York City and Brunswick, Maine.
Photo: Cburns203, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).