The author of Things We Never Say, longlisted 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 longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.
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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!
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
Features
- Book recommendations
What our judges said about the Booker Prize 2026 longlist
- Book extract
An extract from Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout
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