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Elizabeth Strout

» Episode 4: Inside Out

“For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summertime roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy.”

Elizabeth Strout was born in Maine, and her fiction has masterfully evoked the rhythms and emotional depths of small-town life in that state. She is the author of Amy and Isabelle, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Abide With Me, a national bestseller.

Discussing Abide With Me, which focused on the life of a minister, Strout once called herself a "church hopper," saying: "I came up with that name one night a long time ago when friends were talking about being bar hoppers. I thought, oh, I should probably be called a church hopper because I like to go to different churches and observe what they do. I'm really interested in churches and I go to them a lot."

Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She studied law at Syracuse University, practicing briefly before pursuing her career as a fiction writer. She lives in New York City.

See what others are saying:

The Locals
By Louisa Thomas. The New York Times, April 20, 2008

Other books by this author
book Abide With Me
» Buy
book Amy and Isabel
» Buy

Also in Episode 4: Inside Out