Elizabeth Strout

Our guest on today's episode is the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Elizabeth Strout, who joins us to talk about her new novel Olive, Again. Since she published her first novel Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout has been known to readers for her subtle, sidelong portrayals of what Alice Munro, praising Strout's fiction, described as "the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life." Strout's novels like Amy and Isabelle, My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything Can Happen have all been populated with brilliantly illuminated characters, but one resident of the fictional town of Crosby, Maine has crackled with an especially powerful charge. The star of Strout's Pultizer winning 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge — an abrasive, unfiltered, and wincingly honest former schoolteacher — proved a voice that echoed in readers' heads long after the last page of that wry and winning story concluded. So Strout's return to Crosby and to this unforgettable personality in her latest novel Olive, Again, has been hailed by readers and critics alike as one of the best things to happen this year. We were lucky enough to get Elizabeth Strout in the B&N Podcast studio for a talk about storytelling, overheard conversations, and Olive's triumphant return.