Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.

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• Kate Christensen:

  'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whos

• Kate Christensen:

  Littlenecks and cherrystones are chewy and sweet on the half shell with mignonette, served raw. But

• Kate Christensen:

  If you've got cockles, those nickel-size, heart-shaped mollusks, and you want to get fancy, steam t

• Kate Christensen:

  My favorite way to cook a clam is in chowder. I was a New Yorker for 20 years, and I always loved t

• Kate Christensen:

  I left New York in 2009 when I fell in love with someone who had a farmhouse in New Hampshire... Po

• Kate Christensen:

  I procrastinate all morning. That's when I get my office work done and answer e-mails and see what'

• Kate Christensen:

  It's really hard for me, every day, to confront my writing. It never gets easier over time.

• Kate Christensen:

  Finding my way into a novel is always half the battle.

• Kate Christensen:

  I've always had rock star envy. Unfortunately, writing is a pedestrian, tame occupation done while

• Kate Christensen:

  Chan Marshall has one of the most haunting, wrenching voices of any current singer, male or female.