Kate Christensen: On the Truth That Hides in Fiction
In this interview, author Kate Christensen discusses how her own memoir helped give her the courage to write her new literary novel, Good Company.
As Sydney Graves, Kate Christensen writes the Jo Bailen detective series and has just completed Saguaro City, the second installment. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the Maine Literary Award for Memoir. She lives with her husband and their two dogs in northern New Mexico. For more information, please visit: https://katechristensen.net/, and follow her on Instagram.
In this interview, Kate discusses how her own memoir helped give her the courage to write her new literary novel, Good Company, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Kate Christensen
Book title: Good Company
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: June 16, 2026
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Previous: In the Drink; The Epicure’s Lament; The Great Man; The Astral; Blue Plate Special; The Last Cruise; Welcome Home, Stranger
Elevator pitch: During a weekend-long literary festival at her alma mater to promote her new memoir, a middle-aged female writer meets various people with whom she has complicated relationships. As the tension between her memoir and her life deepens, Julia finds herself reckoning with her past, her own internalized misogyny, and the clear and present threat of her fellow panelist, a charming and dangerous man named Ellis Blackwell.
What prompted you to write this book?
I wrote Good Company out of a persistent feeling that my own memoir, Blue Plate Special, couldn’t delve deeply enough because so many of the people I wrote about were still alive. I wrote about my most significant past trauma and pain with a protective stoicism that failed to acknowledge my real damage. This novel’s germ was an urge to explore these truths in fiction that I couldn’t express fully in memoir.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
The idea was clear from the outset: A weekend-long literary festival would be the present-day scaffolding, and excerpts from Julia’s memoir would be the contextual interstices. I wrote a first draft in about nine months. And then I revised through several more drafts over the course of the next nine months. So, altogether, it took about a year and a half to write.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The novel hasn’t been published yet as I’m writing this, but along the way during the writing process I gave the manuscript in its many stages to many trusted readers, mostly female, most of them writers or editors. Although Julia describes a lot of bad behavior and dark feelings, things I’ve experienced myself, I was surprised by the lack of shock and judgment in my readers’ responses. In fact, they related to Julia in powerful ways. This came as a happy relief. It made me feel less alone in it all.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I was surprised by how freeing and even thrilling it was to just write the damn truth. I had anticipated an internal battle—having to force myself to fess up for the good of the novel. I expected to feel scared, daunted, to have to resist the temptation to muzzle myself. The opposite happened as I wrote. It was like taking the cap off a pressurized vessel.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope readers will feel less alone in their own grapplings with family history, misogyny, trauma, ambition, secret sexual yearnings, and love.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Give yourself permission to write all the things you don’t think you’re allowed to express.
