A Conversation with Elena Ferrante

The author of the Neapolitan quartet and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist discuss identity, ambition, truth – and the ‘convulsive’ urge to write.

“Here is what I believe: it is the pressure between the lines of the text, and the pressure rising up from under the text, and the pressure that is running above the text, that gives the writing its meaning, it is the unwritten sitting right next to the written, which makes something go beyond the explanation of the team of experts. And this is what happens when you go outside the margins (if I understand you correctly) and it is this which is mysterious, that we aim for.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“No matter how love for others and language as an act of love try continuously, insistently, desperately to get outside the margins of the suffocating first-person singular, we remain bodies organically enclosed in our isolation. Once I recognised this, I was convinced that the other can be truthfully described only through an “I” that is colliding and in the collision unravels.”

— Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante and Elizabeth Strout, “‘I felt different as a child. I was nearly mute’: Elena Ferrante in conversation with Elizabeth Strout,” The Guardian, March 5, 2022.

LitHub: Jane Ciabattari Talks to the Author of Oh William!

“Reading Oh William! is a joy, a settling back into a beloved connection, hearing how her life has gone, what she’s up to now. But before we move on to Lucy, our conversation begins with the question of what’s going on now with her author.”

— Jane Ciabattari, LitHub

Jane Ciabattari, “Elizabeth Strout on Inhabiting Her Characters and Writing Directly,” LitHub, November 2, 2021.

TIME: Elizabeth Strout Knows We Can’t Escape the Past

“As with Strout’s previous works of fiction, Oh William! tackles big questions about love, loss and the meaning of humanity through the ordinary moments that comprise everyday living and growing older. TIME spoke to the author about the novel, common marital follies and trying to escape the past.”

Annabel Gutterman, “Elizabeth Strout Knows We Can’t Escape the Past,” TIME, October 13, 2021.

The Guardian: On my radar: Cultural highlights

A few things I've been looking at, listening to, and doing these past months during the pandemic for comfort, entertainment, and even a little joy.

“On my radar: Elizabeth Strout's cultural highlights,” The Guardian, October 31, 2020.

The Guardian: 'Oh man, she's back': Elizabeth Strout on the return of Olive Kitteridge

“There is a moment in Olive, Again, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Olive Kitteridge , Elizabeth Strout’s best-seller of 2008, in which the novelist’s virtuosity is on full display. Kitteridge, an elderly widow by now and still living in Maine, spots a former pupil in a diner … and approaches her to revive the connection. In the exchange that follows, one becomes aware of Strout’s sympathetic range…. ‘That was the first story that I wrote for Olive, Again,’ says Strout, cheerfully. ‘She just showed up and I saw her nosing her car into the marina; and I thought: Oh man, she’s back.’ She laughs with pure joy.”

— Emma Brockes, The Guardian

Emma Brockes, "'Oh man, she's back': Elizabeth Strout on the return of Olive Kitteridge," The Guardian, October 19, 2019.