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“They’re two of the most decorated women in modern American letters: Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning maestro of Maine �� and Ann Patchett, whose lauded catalog includes the best-sellers Bel Canto and Commonwealth.

But on a bright fall morning in New York, they were just two old friends catching up to talk about their latest works �� Olive, Againand The Dutch House, respectively �� what they’re reading, and why you won’t find them on Instagram.”

�� Leah Greenblatt, Yahoo! Entertainment

Leah Greenblatt, ��,�� Entertainment Weekly, October 15, 2019.

“The sense of community that pervades Strout’s writing feels even more expansive when her novels converge, when the various Maines she has depicted with exquisite specificity turn out to be the same. It’s as if Strout is telling her readers that her mission in writing these books has been singular: to portray in luminous detail the messy, secretive, consequential lives of people in a small town.”

�� Jonathan Vatner, Los Angeles Review of Books

Jonathan Vatner, ��,�� Los Angeles Review of Books, October 16, 2019.

“It is precisely the complicated mixture of emotions she inspires that makes Olive such an endlessly fascinating and irresistibly endearing heroine. “Olive, Again�� is bleaker, sadder, more achingly beautiful than its predecessor, and a magnificent achievement on its own terms.”

�� Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe

Priscilla Gilman, ��,�� Boston Globe, October 10, 2019.

“[T]he raw power of Ms. Strout’s writing comes from these unvarnished exchanges, in which characters reveal themselves in all of their sadness and badness and confusion.�� The great, terrible mess of living is spilled out across the pages of this moving book. Ms. Strout may not have any answers for it, but she isn’t afraid of it either.”

�� Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

Sam Sacks, ��,�� Wall Street Journal, Oct. 11, 2019.

“Lovers of literary treasure, rejoice. Elizabeth Strout’s new novel “Olive, Again�� reprises beloved Olive Kitteridge, the aging, cranky, bossy, wry, flummoxed, sad, brave, lonely antiheroine of Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 novel and a television miniseries by the same name.

Syllable for syllable, it’s stunning work �� arguably better than the original.”

�� Joan Frank, Washington Post

Joan Frank, “�� Washington Post, October 8, 2019.

A couple weeks ago, I climbed to the top of Mount David with the New Yorker Radio Hour, a place I visited almost every month when I was in school at Bates College.

It was like ancient history to be there and remember! I’d never talked about Mount David to anyone, but it was such an important part of who I became.

Kala Lea, "" The New Yorker Radio Hour, October 4, 2019.

“‘She honestly just showed up,�� Strout says. ‘I could see her in her car, nosing it into the marina.�� Olive had aged; she appeared to now be in her early 80s. ‘She was poking along with her cane. I just saw her so clearly that I thought, “OK, I guess I will have to write this down.’’”��

�� Mary Pols,

I sat down for an interview with Mary Pols recently for the current issue of Maine Women Magazine.

Mary Pols, ��,�� Maine Women Magazine, July 31, 2019.

“I never intended to return to Olive Kitteridge. I really thought I was done with her, and she with me. But a few years ago I was in a European city, alone for a weekend, and I went to a café, and she just showed up. That’s all I can say. She showed up with a force, the way she did the very first time, and I could not ignore her.”

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The current issue of The New Yorker includes an interview with me about my new book OLIVE, AGAIN and an excerpt from it, the short story ��.��

Elizabeth Strout, ��,�� The New Yorker (August 5 & 12, 2019 Issue), July 29, 2019.Deborah Treisman, ��,�� The New Yorker , July 29, 2019.

Commencement / Graduation 2019. Saturday, May 11 2019 10:30am. Pulitzer-winning Maine author Elizabeth Strout was the keynote speaker and received an honorary degree at the University of Maine at Farmington's 2019 Commencement ceremony.

“I’m a writer and so I spend a great deal of my time alone. And every decision I ultimately make on that page, I make alone. And then the work goes out into the world.... What I do (I have come to realize this) is an act of faith. And whatever you all will do will also be acts of faith.

You don’t have to be a teacher or a writer to understand that we are all connected and that what we do every day will ripple out in ways that we will never know.... But we don’t have to know. We just have to trust that whatever we do in the world will find its way to a person who needs it.”

�� 2019 Commencement Address, Univeristy of Maine at Farmington

, YouTube, published on May 14, 2019.

I'm happy to let readers know that I have a new book, OLIVE, AGAIN, coming out next fall, September 3rd, 2019.

Here is the press release from my U.S. publisher, Random House:

Random House is thrilled to announce the return of the beloved Olive Kitteridge in Elizabeth’s Strout’s next novel, OLIVE, AGAIN, which will be published on September 3, 2019. “It turns out �� I just wasn’t done with Olive,�� said Strout. “It was like she kept poking me in the ribs, so I finally said, ‘Okay, okay…��

OLIVE, AGAIN will pick up where OLIVE KITTERIDGE left off, following the next decade of Olive’s life �� through a second marriage, an evolving relationship with her son, and encounters with a cast of memorable characters in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine.

The character of Olive Kitteridge has achieved an iconic place in the imaginations of millions of readers since the 2008 publication of Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, OLIVE KITTERIDGE. In 2014, it was turned into an acclaimed HBO series, which won 8 Emmys, including Best Actress to Frances McDormand for her performance in the title role.

In the citation for the Pulitzer Prize, the committee noted that the novel “packed a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed, and fascinating.��

Apparently, I was not through with Olive, nor she with me!