Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is an American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels—the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her ten novels.

Strout's first novel, Amy and Isabelle (1998), met with widespread critical acclaim, became a national bestseller, and was adapted into a movie starring Elisabeth Shue. Her second novel, Abide with Me (2006), received critical acclaim but ultimately failed to be recognized to the extent of her debut novel. Two years later, Strout wrote and published Olive Kitteridge (2008), to critical and commercial success, grossing nearly $25 million with over one million copies sold as of May 2017. The novel won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book was adapted into a multi Emmy Award-winning mini series and became a New York Times bestseller.

Five years later, she published The Burgess Boys (2013), which became a national bestseller. My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) was met with international acclaim and topped the New York Times bestseller list. Lucy Barton later became the main character in Strout's 2017 novel, Anything Is Possible, a collection of linked stories about the town Lucy Barton came from, although Lucy only appears briefly in the book. A sequel to Olive Kitteridge, titled Olive, Again, was published in 2019. Oh, William!, a third Lucy Barton novel, was published in October 2021. She won the Siegfried Lenz Prize in 2022. Further novels in the Lucy Barton series, Lucy by the Sea and Tell Me Everything, were published in 2022 and 2024; the latter also depicts Olive and other characters from Strout's previous novels.

Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and was raised in small towns in Maine and Durham, New Hampshire. Her father was a science professor, and her mother was an English professor and also taught writing in a nearby high school.

After graduating from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, she spent a year in Oxford, England, followed by studies at law school for another year. In 1982, she graduated with honors, and received a J.D. degree from the Syracuse University College of Law. That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.

Strout moved to New York City, where she waitressed and began developing early novels and stories to little success. She continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen. She enrolled in Law School at Syracuse University, and practiced law for six months before a funding cut ended her job as a Syracuse legal-services advocate. In an interview with Terry Gross in January 2015 she said of the experience, "law school was more of an operation, I think." She stated in a 2016 interview with The Morning News,

I wanted to be a writer so much that the idea of failing at it was almost unbearable to me. I really didn’t tell people as I grew older that I wanted to be a writer—you know, because they look at you with such looks of pity. I just couldn’t stand that.

While teaching part-time at Borough of Manhattan Community College, Strout worked for six or seven years to complete her book Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Amy and Isabelle was adapted as a television movie, starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.