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John Boccacino: Hello, and welcome back to the Cuse Conversations Podcast. My name is John Boccacino, the communication specialist in Syracuse University's Office of Alumni Engagement. I'm also a 2003 graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School Of Public Communications with a degree in broadcast journalism. I am so glad you found our podcast.

Well folks today on the podcast, we are thrilled to be welcoming on an accomplished and acclaimed novelist. Her name is Liz Strout, [inaudible 00:00:36] her degree from the College of Law in 1982, she has published seven books and they have garnered plenty of major literary awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge in 2008, that work ended up being adapted into an Emmy Award-winning mini series, starring the lovely Francis McDormand. She is an accomplished author. She's a big name in the current literary world, and she's our guest today on the Cuse Conversations Alumni Podcast. Liz, thank you for taking the time to join us.

Liz Strout: You're very welcome. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

John Boccacino: I find it fascinating that you go from, you get your law degree here at Syracuse in '82, and yet your career has mostly been focused on novels and the written word. How did you blend those two interests, going to law school and then becoming a novelist? What was the transition that got us from point A to point B?

Liz Strout: Right. Well, I had always wanted and known that I was a writer. I wanted to be a writer, but more importantly, I knew that I was a writer from really quite a young age. And then when I left college, I had a number of different jobs. I worked in a shoe mill, I worked as a secretary, I worked as a waitress, I worked as a piano player in a bar. I had many, many jobs, all the time I was writing and sending out stories and I finally began to realize that nobody was interested in my work at all. And I thought, "Well, I'm not getting any younger, maybe I should go to law school." And I went to law school because I had a very deep social conscience, as I still do, and I thought, "Okay, then I'm going to go to law school and I'm going to do good work for society, and then I'll write at night," which is a little bit misguided because I didn't know how much time being a lawyer in law school was going to take up.

But that's why I went to law school and I'm not at all sorry I went, for many reasons that we can talk about later, but I did drop out after my first year because I just wanted to write so much. And so I stayed in Syracuse and I worked at the department stores downtown, and again, it was a secretary in a law firm, I just did everything. And then I finally realized, okay... And I wrote a novel during that time, but it's a still unpublished novel and will remain so I hope, anyway. But then I realized, okay, if I go back to law school, let me make sure that I'm doing something that I'm really interested in, so I got a gerontology degree at the same time that I finished law school because I've always been interested in older people in society. And so I did, I got a gerontology certificate

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from the School of Social Work at the same time that I got my law degree, thinking that I would do gerontological law.

But in fact, I worked at legal services for six months and that was a job that I wanted, I very much wanted to be doing that, but I was really a very bad lawyer and it was striking to me how bad a lawyer I was, but legal service was very kind and... But nevertheless, the union had the last one hired first one fired rule, and this was during the Reagan years and there were cuts, and so the fellow who ran it called me in and said, "I'm so sorry, but we're going to have to let you go because of the funding." And I was like, "that's okay." Thinking, "Yes."

And I've actually never gone back to law since then, because at that point I was able to begin to get published in magazines. And then when we moved to Manhattan, the JD turned out to be a graduate degree. And I was able to teach at Manhattan Community College in the English department as an adjunct, because I had enough stories that were beginning to get published then. And the chairman liked me and said, "Your JD will be a graduate degree, don't worry." So that worked out.

John Boccacino: People take linear paths and they take nonlinear paths to get to where they are in life, and clearly everything that happened, happened for a reason and really seemed to work out, especially given the fact of your accomplishments as an author. You had mentioned from an early age, you knew you wanted to be a writer, why was that? What was it about writing and the written word that really appealed to you?

Liz Strout: I think that it was my mother's influence basically, because I've only come to recently realized that I think she wanted to be a writer herself. And she gave me notebooks at a very young age, as soon as I could write words, she gave me notebooks, the kind that had those big fat lines and whatever, hyphenated lines in between, I don't even know if they're still available, but she gave me notebooks at a very, very young age. So from the moment that I could write words, I was writing sentences and she would say, "Write down what you did today," and I did. So from the moment I could think, I was thinking in terms of sentences, it felt like.

So I just always understood that I would be a writer and her sense of perceptiveness was one that I feel like I inherited, and we would go places and we would watch people while my father went into a store or something like that to do his business, we would sit in the car and she would notice somebody walking by and comment. And it would just inflame my curiosity about whoever was walking by, and I just became fascinated and interested in people, which I think you need to do if you're going to be a fiction writer.

John Boccacino: Yeah. You absolutely have to have that curiosity and that fascination to get to tell... Because, I have to tell you this, but when you're creating works of fiction, you're creating characters, you're creating these brand new people that you

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hope the readers will identify with. And this brings me to a good question for you, Liz. I hope they're all good questions, but there's a quote of yours that I love, before we go into your career and your works as an author, I really love this quote that you have on your website, where you say, "We want to know, I think, what it's like to be another person, because somehow this helps us position our own self in the world. What are we without this curiosity?" What does that quote mean to you? And why is that so important?

Liz Strout: I think that curiosity is a really important quality for people to have, and some are more curious than others, but I think that we should always be looking at ways to fan the flames of curiosity, because I think that the more we can concern ourselves with what it feels like to be another person, and I really believe this, the more empathic we can be, and we all know what the world looks like without empathy. So I think for me, there's a direct connection between wanting to know what it feels like to be another person and honestly, having a better world as a result of it.

John Boccacino: How do you go about that process of putting yourself in the shoes... You mentioned when your mom would make observations when you were younger, but how do you then take that fascination with learning about people and carving character?

Liz Strout: Right. It's interesting because I have only recently realized, consciously how much time I've spent in my life watching people and listening to people. It's been so intuitive for me to do so, and especially when I was living in New York city, it's just filled with people and it's fascinating, just sit on a subway and you can see tons of people. But I would watch people and I still do, just really watch them and listen to them, and when I would sit on a subway, I would watch perhaps the woman across from me and I would think, "Right, her jeans are tight, let's think what that feels like." I mean, this would all happened just intuitively and instinctively, is what I'm saying. And so I would feel like, "Okay, I know what that feels like. Now, if I crossed my legs like that, or if my facial expression was like hers, what would that be like? Does that mean that she's angry or whatever?"

So I've just been studying people for as long as I can remember in that sense. And then when they become a character to me, I don't really know exactly how that happens, that's an interesting thing. The truthful answer is I don't actually know where my characters come from, but they become very real to me, and if they're that real, then I keep them and if they're not that real, then they get tossed on the floor, literally. Yeah.

John Boccacino: The book Olive Kitteridge, it's set in a coastal town in Maine, and for our audience, you were born in Maine and grew up in small towns across Maine and New Hampshire. Did you draw from any of your real life experiences, places you lived, anything along those lines when it came to writing this Pulitzer Prize winning book, Olive Kitteridge?

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Liz Strout: It's funny because, yes and no, I mean, the people are absolutely made up in that book, but the closest example I can give you is from Olive, Again, which is my last book, which is the return of Olive Kitteridge. And there's a story in there about a young woman who's cleaning house for an older couple, and I did in fact clean house for many people when I was a young girl, basically when I was a teenager. And when my brother read that story, he goes, "That didn't really happen, did it?" And I said, "No, of course it didn't happen, this is fiction."

I mean, the act of cleaning a house was something that was familiar to me because I had gone into people's houses and cleaned their houses. But what happens is that I'm not at all Kayley Callaghan, who is that young woman. I'm not even remotely her, but I'm able to take on her persona and move around that house with her. And then she does things that, of course I did not do, which my brother was so glad to hear, but anyway. So in that sense, there are touchstones that I use that are places that I can visualize and things that I can visualize, but the people are always made up. They just are who they are.

John Boccacino: Is there any hint of truth when it comes to your characters, for example in Olive Kitteridge, of you, maybe they did something that you wanted to do or never got a chance to do, or is it purely just a fictional character that happenstance happens to be based in towns that have some of the same rustic qualities that you grew up in?

Liz Strout: Yeah, it's that. I mean, they don't do things that I would want to do because they're not me. I mean, that's what's so interesting, it's like these people are not me and that's why my brother was so glad to hear that, because they're not me and I understand from a reader's point of view or from a nonfiction writers point of view, how confusing it might be to think, "Oh, well that must be her or something because she used to clean houses," but no, these are people that I just sort of follow them through, I report on what they do. And that's my role, is to write down as honestly as I can, what they're up to.

John Boccacino: What was that moment like, by the way, when you... How did you find out? And were you surprised when you got the... And how'd you get the call? How'd you get the notification about you winning the Pulitzer?

Liz Strout: Right. It was a very strange thing. I'd been on a lecture tour, so out in California, and they had parked me in Las Vegas for the weekend. So Monday I had to give a talk in Las Vegas and then rush for a plane back to California. So I gave the talk and I turned my phone off and this fellow drove me to the airport and then I glanced at my phone and I realized, wow, I've got a lot of missed phone calls, but I was trying to be polite, I was talking with him and then his phone went off and they had tracked him down, and he handed the phone to me and my agent said, "Where have you been?" Because the time difference, they were hours earlier.

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And she was just furious because where had I been? I had won the Pulitzer Prize. And she said, "You're the only person in the whole world that doesn't know this is Pulitzer day. I can't believe it. Where have you been?" And I said, "Oh, I won?" And she said, "Yes you won and all these reporters want to talk to you." And I said, "Well, I have to get on a plane, but I'm just so excited." I was so excited. I was so happy. I remember I actually told the woman I was standing in front of in the line to go through security, I said, "I just won the Pulitzer Prize." She goes, "You did?" I can't believe I told a stranger, but she was so happy for me, but anyway, it was a wonderful feeling. There was no downside to it.

John Boccacino: Well, it's such a tremendous honor, and congratulations again, I know that it's been a couple of years, but I'm sure you never forget the... And that story is so great about being at the airport security and telling a random stranger about winning a Pulitzer Prize, that is so-

Liz Strout: It's so unlike me to do that, actually, and she just couldn't have been nicer. I sort of whispered it to her. She was such a lovely woman, but anyway.

John Boccacino: So if we go back, Liz, and look through some of your works, I know your first book was Amy and Isabelle that came out in 1998, that was the first of the seven works of fiction that you've had published. Was there a seminal moment when you realized that A, you could carve a career out of your writings and B, that there was an audience that was really interested in reading what you had to say?

Liz Strout: Well, I was never sure that I was going to make a living at it, but I know that as I wrote that book, it took me, I think, almost seven years to write that book, and I had been writing stories up until then. And I actually, as I said, I had been teaching at Manhattan Community College, and then I remembered, I decided to take a semester off to finish the book.

And it's funny to look back to realize how seriously I took myself, because there was nobody that was aware that I was really writing except for my husband and daughter. But I just felt as that book came into fruition for me, I understood that it was a good book, but it still took me a couple of years after I finished it, to be able to find an agent, to be able to find a publisher. So it was a long haul, but there was some sense that I have always had, even from a young child, that I actually could do this. I mean, I must have had that sense because it would have been crazy to continue for so long with so little success, except that I sort of kept thinking, "I can do this."

John Boccacino: To someone who's never had the pleasure of reading one of your books, how would you describe your literary writing style?

Liz Strout: I like to think that it's clean. I mean, it's not minimalistic at all, but it's clean. There's nothing in there that's extra, I think. I take pretty good care to make

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sure that what I don't need gets dropped on the floor and what remains is what the reader needs.

John Boccacino: Yeah. I read one of the reviews of one of your works that said you don't write words to impress the reader, would you agree with that assessment?

Liz Strout: Yes. I don't write to impress the reader, I write because I want to invite the reader in. I think about the reader as I write a lot. And I think about the reader as somebody that needs my help to go through this journey, to go through this story or book, and I need to make the reader feel safe. So I'm never there to impress the reader, I'm never there to show off to the reader. I'm there to help the reader feel safe and say, "Come with me and you're going to be okay. We're going to go through a variety of experiences that you might not have had yourself, but we're going to be fine." And I think of it as almost a dance with the reader and that I'm in the lead, or I have to take the lead.

John Boccacino: It's keeping the reader in mind when you're telling these stories, who else inspires you when you write?

Liz Strout: Right. I think all the good writers that I have read throughout my life have inspired me. And I started at a very young age, reading adult books. I mean, I have very few memories of reading children's books at all. And so starting with... I would make myself lists in high school of classics and I would read them and check them off. I mean, this was on my own. And it was sort of like giving myself constant independent studies of making sure that I had read Chekhov and making sure that I had read [inaudible 00:17:28], these things that I needed to feel... I felt like I needed to read these books.

And it was kind of thrilling because my mother would suggest a few of them, but most of them, I sort of discovered on my own because I was younger than people were that were reading them, they weren't assigned to me in a class, that's what I'm telling you. So I would sort of discover them on my own and that's a really exciting way to learn something. And so all of those classics that I read as a kid, and then I would reread them, have had tremendous influence on me. And then especially Alice Munroe, has been a very big influence on me and the stories of William Trevor, when I discovered him years ago in The New Yorker, he's been a huge influence on me as well.

John Boccacino: You mentioned earlier during our interview, that fiction was something that really, again, appeal to you and resonated with you, why is that line of writing, the world of fiction, something that is really so important for you to tell stories in that universe?

Liz Strout: I always remember, and I don't remember what book it was, but I remember as a young kid reading a book of fiction, some grown-up piece of fiction, and I remember thinking, "Oh, I've had that thought." And I don't even remember what the thought was. I don't remember what the book was, but I remember

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thinking, "Oh, I've had that thought." And that was so exciting to me to realize that somebody else had a similar thought that I had had, because it wasn't a thought that I had put into words. And that was my first understanding that fiction can get you inside the head of another person, because that's what I'm trying to do as a fiction writer, is to get somebody inside the head of another person, so they can think, "Oh, I've had that thought as well," or, "Oh, I can't believe it, but I actually did want to steal my daughter-in-law's [inaudible 00:19:21]..." or whatever. You know how it goes.

And believe me, people apparently have wanted to, because when I went on the road with Olive Kitteridge, there were a number of women who would lean down and say to me, "How did you know about daughter-in-laws?" And I don't have a daughter-in-law, so I obviously didn't know, but I knew something. Anyway, that's what I'm trying to get at, is the part of the human mind where people are not telling other people, or maybe not even telling themselves, their darkest or not even that dark thoughts, but that area of the mind that remains private, always. I want to enter that and allow the reader to experience it as well.

John Boccacino: What would you say... I know we talked about Olive Kitteridge winning the Pulitzer and on the surface, I mean, that's such a high, incredible honor for an author to receive. Is that your proudest accomplishment or do you have others that really stand out to you? Was it your first book? What was it that really, if you had to pick your seminal moment, your highlight of your writing career, what would stand out to you?

Liz Strout: That's a good question. I don't know. I think My Name Is Lucy Barton was an opening of a different kind... I mean, it was a motion forward for my career, I mean, for my writing style, I think I pushed a boundary with that and I have a sense of accomplishment with having written that kind of book, but I don't really think there was anything. Actually, My Name Is Lucy Barton was long listed for the Man Booker Prize, that was pretty cool. So almost as good as the Pulitzer Prize.

John Boccacino: Well, hey, if people are paying attention and they're bestowing these honors and accolades, you know you're doing something right when it comes to your writing style, but switching from the written word to the multimedia side of things, I did want to ask you, when Olive Kitteridge was transformed into the Emmy Award-winning mini series, did you have any concerns about your work, not getting misinterpreted, but the translation from the written to the screen, what was your thought process behind how that all played out?

Liz Strout: Right. I would have had serious doubts because I don't write books to have them made into films, but I would have had serious doubts, but it was Francis McDormand, she was the driving force. And so I knew, not just because I had seen her in different shows and movies, but I met her, we met and talked a

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number of times and I realized, okay, she absolutely can do this. And that was the reason that I was okay with it, because of Francis McDormand.

And I said to the screenwriter, I had one long conversation with her over the phone, and I said, "You just do what you need to do." And she told me later that that had been very helpful because I was giving her permission to go ahead and make it however she needed to make it. And I looked back and I think, wow, I'm so glad they did a good job because... But I somehow thought they would, and they did, but it was because of Francis McDormand that I was able to hand that over. And the same with Laura Linney, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, I mean, she played Lucy Barton on Broadway and also in London for a six week run. And again, it was because I had met Laura Linney and I knew she could do it.

John Boccacino: It's kind of one of those cliched questions, but I have to throw it out there, your arc, your career journey, do you ever take a moment to kind of pinch yourself and say, "I cannot believe that I've gone through what I've gone through and I've had these accomplishments,"? because it's such an awesome story to get to tell here, Liz, of what you've accomplished.

Liz Strout: That's funny because I think mostly I have not had those moments because I've been writing more and more lately. I mean, the books have been coming out faster, so there was a tremendous amount of travel and press and all that kind of stuff that doesn't give me a moment to reflect. But with the pandemic I have, a couple of times actually, thought to myself, maybe in the middle of the night or something thought, "Wow, look what you did." But probably just a couple of times.

John Boccacino: You got to take stock and celebrate the victories, especially with the chaotic nature of life here in 2020.

Liz Strout: Oh man, I know. I know, exactly.

John Boccacino: Have you found yourself having more time to write more topics that come to you that are maybe inspirational for future works, since we've been in this kind of work from home environment?

Liz Strout: It's interesting because I had just turned in a book, which will be coming out next fall, and then the pandemic occurred. And so I almost thought I should write an epilogue, and then I realized, no, I'm not going to write an epilogue because the way that book ends, I like the ending to be exactly what it is, I don't want somebody to turn the page and start an epilogue. So I started the epilogue as a separate book, but a couple of months before the election, I realized that there was a tension that was just too extravagant for me to be able to focus that well on my work. So I have different thoughts and I have different ideas and there are certain things that I have seen up here in Maine, pre-election and stuff that may come to fruition. But I have not found it to be the most fruitful time for my work because of the level of anxiety that rumbles below everything.

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John Boccacino: I want to take it back to your career at Syracuse, you dropped out, but you came back, you finished off your degree, and I know that you're active with the College Of Law. I know that you'll speak at alumni reunions, alumni weekends, you'll kind of give back however you can to our aspiring law students, what would you say was the impact that Syracuse University and the College Of Law had on your career?

Liz Strout: Well, first of all, I loved Syracuse University, I loved it the moment I saw it and I went there sight unseen. I didn't visit the campus or anything like that, I just flew to Syracuse and there I was, and I loved it. The moment I saw Syracuse University, I just loved it. It just felt wonderful. And then when I started law school, I noticed... And just because I dropped out, it doesn't mean that I wasn't appreciating law school, so don't forget that. Because I noticed at the end of the first semester, I'll never forget it, I realized when I went home that I thought differently as a result of those core courses and that one semester. And it was so interesting because I realized there were people around me who were perfectly intelligent, but I thought that they're not thinking clearly, they're not thinking well, and that's how much law school, even in that brief amount of time, changed my way of thinking.

And I think that what happened was, the emotional part, and I have always had too many emotions, was stripped away because it's the law and you're looking at it legally, and that was so good for me. It was so helpful for me to get all those extra emotions stripped away and to just look and think legally, and I understood that and I understood that it was good for me. So I think for me to have gone to Syracuse law school was a really good thing. I mean, I'm sorry I was a bad lawyer, but it's different from being a law student. So I think it was really important and there were good professors and I will just never forget that feeling of understanding that I thought differently and recognizing when I went home that other people were not thinking differently.

John Boccacino: It's really cool to hear you have that moment of the realization of, yeah, you're thinking differently, you're stripping down your emotions from the thought process. Not a lot of people, I think are self-aware at that age to come away with that takeaway. So I commend you for having that kind of realization.

Liz Strout: It was very clear to me and it was really interesting. Yeah.

John Boccacino: Is there any sense of how Syracuse and your time at the law school impacted and influenced your writing style?

Liz Strout: Yes. I mean, for many years I thought, "Wow, I wonder if that was like a wrong turn in the road," but it wasn't at all. Because I honestly think that the change in thinking that I was just discussing, I think that actually eventually made its way into my work. I mean, when I was talking about, I hope that I write clean sentences, that's part of what I'm talking about, to get the excess away, we don't need the excess, we just need the storyline. We need to make the person

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feel that they're completely with us, but we don't need anything else. And I really do believe that my legal training was a part of that, ultimately.

John Boccacino: What advice do you give when you happen to either be speaking to a class of law school students or students in general, who are considering getting into the written world, getting into the author landscape? What advice do you give to those students?

Liz Strout: If you really want it. If you really, really want to be a writer, then just don't stop. Just keep reading good sentences and trying to write good sentences. Just keep reading and writing, and reading and writing and don't stop. And if you do stop, that's fine, it just means she didn't want it that much. And then you'd probably be a much better lawyer.

John Boccacino: You talked about not stopping if you want to continue with this profession and clearly your accomplishments have been immense and you've made a big impact and you're doing great work as an author, is there a topic that you really have been dying to write about? I guess, what's coming up next for you down the pike?

Liz Strout: Well, it's funny because I was just looking through some experimental manuscripts, things that I had sort of started, and I guess the answer is, I don't know and if I knew, I wouldn't be able to tell you because it's not good for my work. For me, there has to be a sense of furtiveness about my work. It has to be private until it goes public. It has to be just something between myself and the reader, like we're in a little toad hall together or something. So I can't talk about my future work, but I'm not sure, I don't really know anyway, but if I did, I wouldn't tell you, that's my point. Sorry.

John Boccacino: No, listen, we have to ask the questions because we have a captive audience that wants to know what's up next. I guarantee you the one best way to find out what is happening, there's a great website that Liz has, elizabethstrout.com. That's S-T-R-O-U-T.com. It's a great resource for all of her works of fiction that had been produced so far, including the seven we've mentioned here so far on the podcast, Liz, whatever you put your mind to, I know you will succeed. I'm glad you did not succeed in the world of law as an attorney, because it's been a privilege to have you on here as an author, talking about your works on the podcast.

Liz Strout: Thank you so much, John. It's been really lovely to talk to you. It really has been. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

John Boccacino: Thanks for checking out the latest installment of the Cuse Conversations Podcast. You can find our podcast on all of your major podcasting platforms, including Apple podcasts, Google play, and Spotify. You can also find our podcast at alumni.syr.edu/cuseconversationsandanchor.fm/cuseconversations. My name is John Boccacino, signing off for the Cuse Conversations Podcast.

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