“It's interesting to try to imagine how early humans discovered what was edible and what wasn't. Who figured out that when you cooked stinging nettles, the sting would go away completely? How many people had to die before the relative toxicity of wild mushrooms became widely known?”

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.