Katy Lederer

Katy Lederer earned her BA from the University of California-Berkeley and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of the full-length collections of poetry Winter Sex (2002) and The Heaven-Sent Leaf (2008), a work that sprang, in part, from her experiences working at a quantitative hedge fund in Manhattan. Lederer is also the author of the memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (2003), which recounts her experiences growing up with her siblings, both world-class poker players. The book was a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice” and named a “Best Book of the Year” by Esquire.
 
In 1997 Lederer founded the poetry Explosive Magazine and the press Spectacular Books; she edited both ventures until 2007. She is a former editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter and a current poetry editor at Fence Magazine. Her honors and awards include fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Discover Great New Writers award from Barnet & Noble. She serves on the boards of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and Triple Canopy.