The Book of Difficult Fruit
Inspired by twenty-six fruits, the essayist, poet, and pie lady Kate Lebo expertly blends natural, culinary, medical, and personal history. Out now from FSG and Picador.
“[A] dazzling, thorny new essay collection”
—Samin Nosrat, The New York Times
Winner of the Washington State Book Award, finalist for the PNBA Award, and selected by Spokane is Reading for the 2022 all-city read. Named a Best Book of the Year by New York magazine, NPR, The Globe and Mail, Electric Literature, and The Atlantic.
Read My Latest
Knowing Your Roots in The Inlander
Heart is Where the Home is in The Spokesman-Review
The Carrot Cake Queen of Spokane in Rites of Green
A Place You Went to Eat in The Inlander
Take A Class
The Poet as Botanist via Richard Hugo House (on Zoom). Amateur botany was a Victorian pursuit whose discoveries were valued by the scientific community until the increasing complexity of biochemistry took plant knowledge out of the hands of the average person. Poets didn’t get the memo. In this class, we’ll consider how writers today imagine the voices of plants to reach for new language, insight, and emotion. We’ll read plant-voiced poems and write our own poems (or essays!) to see what we too, as poet botanists, can discover. Tuesdays, February 7 – March 14. Registration begins December 6. More info/registration.
Pie School
I teach pie-making lessons in private homes and for culinary centers throughout the nation. Find out more here.
Kate Lebo 