Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist Advises Students to Listen 鈥 and Persevere
Image by Edward Brennen
11/05/2024
By Katharine Webster
, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton books, doesn鈥檛 waste words.
Yet, everything she said in a campus conversation with author and English Prof. Andre Dubus III spoke volumes to the writing students in attendance, many of whom had submitted questions in advance. Her advice: Listen to ordinary people, think of your reader and persevere in your writing.
鈥淚鈥檓 just so interested in ordinary people 鈥 but they鈥檙e not ordinary. Nobody鈥檚 ordinary,鈥 she told an audience of more than 250 students, faculty, staff and community members. 鈥淭he stories that people have are extraordinary.鈥
Image by Edward Brennen
That message resonated for Nick Rossi, a senior majoring in digital media and minoring in English who has taken creative writing classes with Dubus and Prof. Maureen Stanton, a creative nonfiction author.
鈥淭he most valuable thing I took away 鈥 was Elizabeth鈥檚 comments about how there鈥檚 value in ordinary people and ordinary things,鈥 Rossi said. 鈥淓veryone has a story, and although we might be considered common, none of us are. We鈥檝e all been through things and have something to share.鈥
Strout鈥檚 appearance on Oct. 30 was the latest in the Writers on Campus series organized by the English Department鈥檚 creative writing faculty. Stanton said that the events, which often include classroom conversations, give students, 鈥渆specially our aspiring writers who may be part of the next generation of literary voices, the opportunity to engage with a diverse group of memoirists, poets and fiction writers.鈥
鈥淭hey speak directly to students about their writing lives and their artistic processes,鈥 Stanton said. 鈥淲e hear over and over from our students how inspiring these presentations are to them.鈥
Many attendees lined up afterward so that Strout, who won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for 鈥淥live Kitteridge鈥 and whose books routinely top the bestseller lists, could sign copies of her newest work, 鈥淭ell Me Everything.鈥
鈥淭ell Me Everything鈥 brings together Strout鈥檚 two best-known characters, Olive Kitteridge, also the subject of 鈥淥live, Again,鈥 and Lucy Barton, who features in four previous books. Other characters from Strout鈥檚 earlier works also return.
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Olive Kitteridge, a crusty, retired schoolteacher living in the fictional seaside town of Crosby, Maine, materialized two decades ago while Strout was in the kitchen, either loading or unloading the dishwasher, she said.
鈥淚 had a very strong sense of this presence,鈥 Strout said. 鈥淚 heard her say to herself, 鈥業t鈥檚 high time everybody left.鈥 And I thought, 鈥極h wow, let鈥檚 get that down.鈥欌
Lucy Barton, a successful writer who had a difficult childhood in the Midwest, came to Strout as an interior voice 鈥 one that required Strout to write in the first person for the first time, she said.
鈥淟ucy鈥檚 voice came to me like a fine gold thread coming from above, and I thought, 鈥業f I can catch hold of that thread, that voice, then I can do her credit,鈥欌 she said. 鈥淟ucy allows me to look at really quiet parts of me.鈥
Lucy, Olive and other recurring characters speak to her so often that they have come to feel like relatives, she said to laughter. Another constant presence in Strout鈥檚 writing studio is the reader.聽
鈥淚鈥檓 always writing for a reader,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he reader is patient, but not super-patient, and interested, but not desperately interested, and so it鈥檚 my job as I write to give this reader something that is worth the reader鈥檚 while.鈥
She also knows that she needs to give the reader a break from emotionally intense scenes and characters by shifting to descriptions of landscape and weather or changing to a less demanding scene, she said.聽聽
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鈥淓very reader will bring their own story to my book, and so in that sense it becomes a different book for every reader, as it should,鈥 she said. 鈥淎s I鈥檝e developed my craft more, I鈥檓 conscious of leaving more space for the reader to do that.鈥澛
Asked about her writing habits, Strout said, 鈥淚 just sit down and do it. It鈥檚 my job.鈥澛
鈥淚 don鈥檛 really get writer鈥檚 block; I just write badly,鈥 she said. 鈥淏ut I did learn 鈥 early on, if I could get a scene with what I call a good heartbeat, I could call it a good day鈥檚 work.鈥
To get that heartbeat, Strout said, she uses whatever emotion or preoccupation is 鈥渢ugging me at that time鈥 to bring life to her writing.聽
Strout said she never plans out a book in advance. Instead, she lets her characters drive her writing of scenes, and then combines the scenes into a group of interconnected short stories or a novel.
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Many people have congratulated Strout on her 鈥渙vernight success,鈥 she said. But she began writing at age 4 and didn鈥檛 publish her first work of fiction, 鈥淎my and Isabelle,鈥 until she was 43.
Strout had finished the manuscript and spent two years trying to find someone 鈥 anyone 鈥 to help her get it published, to no avail. Then a friend suggested that she contact a former editor at The New Yorker who 鈥渉ad been rejecting my stories very kindly for many years鈥 and had just moved to Random House. She did, and he called her up and told her to send over her manuscript.
After reading it, the editor told her they鈥檇 have to find her an agent. Within a week, she had five lunches with five different agents. Now, she has sold more than 5 million books. 鈥淥live Kitteridge鈥 was also made into an that won eight Emmy awards.
Her parting advice to students: 鈥淚f you really know that you鈥檙e a writer, then don鈥檛 stop.鈥
Dubus, who invited Strout to campus, met her in 1999 while they were on book tours, often to the same cities, organized by the publicists at Penguin Random House.聽
鈥淲e were on the same flights together and got to know each other, and we鈥檝e been friends ever since,鈥 Dubus said after the event.
