On Writing

WE - Women for Expo: "Poetry is my Food"

All my life, I have been struck again and again with the fact that poets seem to know things that we others don’t and that what they give us, if we can receive it, is a truth that relieves the depth of our natural aloneness.

For WE - Women for Expo's Novel of the World, a brief essay on the theme of feeding and nourishment, "Poetry is my Food."

OPB: “Why I think fiction matters”

Fiction is there to let us know we’re not alone. Whatever we’ve thought and felt has probably been thought and felt before.

As part of their ongoing series Literary Arts: The Archive Project, Oregon Public Broadcasting will be airing a talk of mine tonight, originally given in January 2011 at the Portland Arts & Lectures series in Portland, Oregon. It will also be posted to their website for future listening.

The Archive Project - Jan. 7, 2015
OPB | Jan. 07, 2015 9 p.m.

Episode 10 of Literary Arts: The Archive Project features author Elizabeth Strout. In her lecture “Why I think fiction matters,” Strout explores how reading magnifies our understanding of the human experience. 

Enjoy! And thank you, OBP and Portland Arts & Lectures.

Strout, Rosenblatt contemplate the power of place in fiction

Much of Roger Rosenblatt and Elizabeth Strout’s Wednesday morning lecture conversation in the Amphitheater centered around being true to a setting when writing fiction.

“It took me a while to understand the importance of place, actually,” Strout said. “I had to live in New York for many years before I realized, ‘Oh, I actually really do come from Maine.’ ”
— Allison Levitsky, Morning Lecture Recap, The Chautauquan Daily, official newspaper of Chautauqua Institution