The author of Things We Never Say, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2026, on the book that mesmerised her as a child, and returning to Virginia Woolf
Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times
She was longlisted in 2016 for My Name Is Lucy Barton and shortlisted in 2022 for Oh William! Her other books include Tell Me Everything, Anything is Possible, Amy and Isabelle, Abide With Me, The Burgess Boys, Olive Kitteridge, and Olive, Again. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Olive Kitteridge, which was made into an Emmy-winning television mini-series. She has also been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Orange Prize. She lives in Maine.
The Things We Never Say was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.
Elizabeth Strout on The Things We Never Say
‘My inspiration for The Things We Never Say came from two rather odd places. The first was an old obituary I saw from decades ago. My friend in upstate New York sent me a page of them, and there was one man who had the last name Damm. (I dropped one of the m’s for my character’s last name.) The man in the obituary haunted me because he looked so entirely ordinary and pleasant. He wore big wire-framed glasses and just had an exceptionally kind look to his face.
The second part of the inspiration came from a brief conversation with a man I know in Maine who told me that one day he and his father were riding in a boat off the coast of Massachusetts, and they saw a man’s head in the water. They rode up to him and pulled him out and the fellow telling me the story said that a few nights later his father had called the man and taken him for a drink. From these two images sprang forth the story of Artie Dam.’
Read the full interview here.
Lucy Barton is one of literature’s immortal characters – brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and most of all, ordinary, like us all.
The 2022 judges on Oh William!
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All nominated books
With exquisite prose and profound insight, Elizabeth Strout captures the way grief reverberates through decades, the comfort found in deep friendships and the freedom that comes when we break free of our secrets
Bestselling author Elizabeth Strout returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any time
Elizabeth Strout’s moving story shows how a simple hospital visit illuminates the tender relationship between an estranged mother and daughter
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Reading guide: The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
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The Booker Prize 2026 shortlist: what our judges said
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