Katha Pollitt

Born in New York City, poet, political columnist, and personal essayist Katha Pollitt was educated at Radcliffe and earned an MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of the poetry collections The Mind-Body Problem (2009) and Antarctic Traveller (1981), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, including The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) and Best American Poetry 2011.

Pollitt’s columns for The Nation, the New York Times, and the New Yorker are compiled in Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time (2006); Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001); and Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism (1995), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The title piece of her personal essay collection Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (2007) was anthologized in Best American Essays (2003). Her book Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (2014) was listed as a Notable Book of 2014 by the New York Times.

A Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, Pollitt has also received a Whiting Foundation Writing Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught poetry at Princeton University, Barnard College, and the 92nd Street Y.