Literary Birthday – 22 August – Kate Christensen

Happy Birthday, Kate Christensen, born on 22 August 1962.

Kate Christensen Quotes

1. I’ve always subscribed to the notion that a writer always has something else to say, and the more you write, the more you have to write about, because the act of writing is self-generating.
2. Writing blog posts is totally freeing in a whole new way for me. I’m not writing it for any editor, and I’m not being paid, so I can say whatever I want.
3. I have always felt loneliest in the presence of other people. People I can’t connect with. People I feel unseen by. People who make me feel insincere or uncomfortable. For me, loneliness comes from a sense of missing something. I never miss anything when I’m alone.
4. Read novels. That’s the best way to learn how to write. If you want to be a novelist, read all different kinds of novels.
5. Writing involves a lot of fear, and discipline is a way to get over your fear, because you just do it.
6. I think the first sentence is easy to write, but it’s hard to think up. I think I can’t start writing something until I’ve got that first sentence… that is the thing that starts the engine, the key in the ignition. And the last sentence is the sentence that I write toward as I write the whole book. So, in a way, they’re the hardest sentences, but they are also, once you get to them, the easiest.
7. Often I choose characters who express not my best self, but the sides of me I haven’t developed or haven’t expressed.

Kate Christensen is an American novelist, memoirist, critic, and essayist. Her fiction is marked by vivid character studies, a distinctive voice, and complex interpersonal relationships. Themes of home, belonging, and displacement are woven throughout her novels. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for her fourth novel, The Great Man. She has also written essays for a variety of anthologies, including The Bitch in the House and Why We Write About Ourselves. Her memoir Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites (2013) traces her life through eating and appetite, chronicling both hunger and self-discovery. It was followed by How to Cook a Moose: A Culinary Memoir (2015), which documented her move to Maine and the ethics of local food culture. The book won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her eleventh novel, Good Company, was published in 2026.

Source for image: Author’s press photo

by Amanda Patterson
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