Katherine "Katy" Lederer (born ) is an American poet and author of the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.

Early life and education

Lederer is the daughter of bestselling non-fiction author Richard Lederer and Rhoda (née Spangenberg) Lederer. The child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, She graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where her father was on the English faculty. Her memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers was published in 2003. It was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was named a Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and one of eight Best Books of the Year by Esquire Magazine.

From 2002 to 2008, Lederer worked as a recruiter at D.E. Shaw & Co., a quantitative hedge fund in midtown Manhattan, which provided much of the inspiration for the pieces in her most recent poetry collection, The Heaven-Sent Leaf. The title of both the book and the opening poem is taken from the second half of Goethe’s Faust and describes paper money. Other poems in the collection reference the works of John Kenneth Galbraith, Nietzsche, and Edith Wharton.

She married Ben Statz, after being introduced to him by her sister Annie Duke. They have two children.

Bibliography

  • Winter Sex (2002).
  • Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (2003).
  • The Heaven-Sent Leaf (2008).
  • The Engineers (2023).

References

  • Official website
  • Profile in The New Yorker's Talk of the Town
  • Interview with Matt Borondy in "Identity Theory"
  • Interview with Kurt Andersen on NPR's "Studio 360"
  • Interview with Anne Strainchamps on NPR's "To the Best of Our Knowledge"
  • Interview with Tess Vigeland on NPR's "Marketplace"
  • Interview with Canadian Public Broadcasting's "As It Happens"
  • Katy Lederer's Author Page at Wave Books