“Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each other's company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.”

American novelist and memoirist

Kate Christensen is an American novelist and memoirist. She won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her fourth novel, The Great Man, and is also known for her food-related memoirs. Her fiction includes The Great Man, a novel about a painter and the three women in his life. She has also written Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose; the latter won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for memoir. Her eleventh novel, Good Company, is due from HarperCollins in June 2026.