Kate Christensen
Kate Christensen
Kate Christensenis an American novelist. She won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for her fourth novel, The Great Man, about a painter and the three women in his life. Her previous novels are In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane, and The Epicure's Lament. Her fifth novel, Trouble, was released in paperback by Vintage/Anchor in June 2010. Her sixth novel, The Astral, was published in hardcover by Doubleday in June 2011. She is also the author of two food-related memoirs, "Blue Plate Special"and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 August 1962
CountryUnited States of America
I left New York in 2009 when I fell in love with someone who had a farmhouse in New Hampshire... Portland, Maine, felt like the inevitable place for us.
Even after he was gone, I still loved my father. I looked Norwegian, like him, with a long face, strong jaw, thin mouth, and flashing eyes. And, like him, I was verbal, easygoing, and low-key on the surface, and, deep down, proud, socially paranoid, full of self-loathing, and prone to rage at injustice.
After a day of writing, I love nothing more than to go into my kitchen and start chopping onions and garlic on the way to cooking an improvised meal with whatever ingredients are on hand. Cooking is the perfect counterpoint to writing. I find it more relaxing than anything else, even naps, walks, or hot baths.
My favorite way to cook a clam is in chowder. I was a New Yorker for 20 years, and I always loved tomato-based, celery-heavy Manhattan chowders.
At first blush, it seems odd that loser lit books are rejected initially, then go on to be fiercely loved by legions of readers. This apparent contradiction might be due to the fact that if they didn't screw up their lives, most losers would be the kind of power-elite, Type A go-getters whom readers love to hate.
'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings.
I love the perspective afforded by having lived five decades, a degree of bemused and muted calm, a relief from the insistent demands of a turbulent ego and rampant ambition. I'd love to stay here forever. But something tells me that 50 is a sunny idyll, a temporary state of grace, a golden afternoon.
David Levi is a teacher as well as a chef, and, like most teachers, he loves to talk.
Broccoli gets such a bad rap. This is perplexing to those of us who love that green, treelike, stalky vegetable.
My blog is a celebration of the unexpected, settled, happy life I find myself living in Portland, Maine, at the ripe old age of fifty with someone I deeply love and am very happy with. That's part of why I started the blog.
Most of all, I love unfussy, unpretentious, simple food made with excellent ingredients. If I'm a snob, it's about quality, not cuisine.
In literature, older women are not often given center stage.
I'm not a foodie - I'm an eater: I'm hungry.
Eating by myself in my own apartment, single and alone again for the first time in many years, I should have felt, but did not feel, sad. Because I had taken the trouble to make myself a real dinner, I felt nurtured and cared for, if only by myself. Eating alone was freeing, too; I didn't have to make conversation.