Katha Pollitt

Acclaimed Poet & Columnist
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner

Readings &
Lecture Topics
  • What?! It’s the 21st Century and I’m Still Not Equal?!—Women in the 21st Century
  • What? It’s the 21st Century and We’re Still Fighting for Reproductive Right?
  • PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
  • An Evening with Katha Pollitt

Biography

“Over the years, I’ve been outsourcing my thinking on a host of subjects to Katha Pollitt.” —Barbara Ehrenreich

“[Pollitt’s] intelligence is always relentless, always bracing, while always maintaining a wonderful lightness. She is the gin-and-Campari of the women’s movement.” —Mary Gordon

Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt has won many prizes and awards for her work, including two National Magazine Awards for Essays and Criticism and the National Book Critics Circle Award for her first collection of poetry, Antarctic Traveller (1982). Her second poetry book is entitled The Mind-Body Problem (Random House, 2009). Pollitt’s column, “Subject to Debate,” in The Nation magazine, was called “the best place to go for original thinking on the left” by The Washington Post. Many of her contributions to The Nation are compiled in three books: Virginity and Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Out TimeSubject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library); Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism (Knopf), nominated for The National Book Critics Circle Award. Pollitt was nominated for a 2013 National Magazine Award in Columns and Commentary. Before she became a regular columnist for The Nation, Pollitt edited its Books & the Arts section. Her book Learning to Drive is a poignant, hilarious, and sometimes outrageous collection of stories drawn from her own life.

Named a NY Time Notable Book of 2014, Pollitt’s Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (Picador, 2014) is powerful argument for abortion as a moral right and social good. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly wrote: “An impassioned, persuasive case for understanding [abortion] in its proper context…With wit and logic, Pollitt debunks the many myths surrounding abortion, and analyzes what abortion opponents really oppose: namely, women’s growing sexual freedom and power….With arguments that are both lucid and sensible, Pollitt successfully reframes the abortion debate to show that, ‘in the end, abortion is an issue of fundamental human rights.’” An urgent, controversial book, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument and reaffirms the priority of a woman’s life and health.

Pollitt has also written essays and book reviews for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Harper’s, Ms., Glamour, Mother Jones, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. She has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered, Charlie Rose, The McLaughlin Group, CNN, Dateline NBC, and the BBC. Her work is taught in many university classes. Her 1992 essay on the culture wars, “Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Me…” won the National Magazine Award for essays and criticism, and she won a Whiting Foundation Writing Award the same year. In 1993 her essay “Why Do We Romanticize the Fetus?” won the Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The essay “Learning to Drive” is anthologized in Best American Essays 2003. As a poet, Pollitt has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poetry has most recently been anthologized in The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006). In 2010 she was awarded The American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Born in New York City, Pollitt received an A.B. in philosophy from Radcliffe College and an M.F.A. in writing from Columbia University. Married to political theorist Steven Lukes, she lives in New York City.

Short Bio

Katha Pollitt is a poet, essayist, and columnist for The Nation. She has won many prizes and awards for her work, including two National Magazine Awards for Essays and Criticism. Pollitt is the author of Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, a powerful argument for abortion as a moral right and social good; Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories, a collection of personal essays; and Virginity or Death! She is also the author of two books of poetry, Antarctic Traveller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Mind-Body Problem. Before she became a regular columnist for The Nation, Pollitt edited its Books & the Arts section, and she has also written essays and book reviews for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Harper’s, Ms., Glamour, Mother Jones, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. Pollitt has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poetry has most recently been anthologized in The Oxford Book of American Poetry. In 2010 she was awarded The American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. She lives in New York City.

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