This transcript was exported on Nov 23, 2020 - view latest version here. 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 Liz Strout Cuse Conversation Podcast (Completed 11/23/20) Page 1 of 11 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Nov 23, 2020 - view latest version here. 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 Liz Strout Cuse Conversation Podcast (Completed 11/23/20) Page 2 of 11 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Nov 23, 2020 - view latest version here. 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.