FORA.tv Speaker - Katha Pollitt

Columnist Katha Pollitt is well known for her sharp and provocative analyses of popular culture and politics. Her "Subject to Debate" column, which The Washington Post called "the best place to go for original thinking on the left," began in January 1994 and appears every other week in The Nation; it is frequently reprinted in newspapers across the country. Pollitt has been contributing to The Nation since 1980. 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. Also in 1992, she won the Whiting Foundation Writing Award; in 1993 her essay "Why Do We Romanticize the Fetus?" won the Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Pollitt has also written essays for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Harper's, Mirabella, Ms., Glamour, Mother Jones, and The New York Times.She has appeared on NPR's Fresh Airand All Things Considered, Charlie Rose, The McLaughlin Group, CNN, Dateline NBCand the BBC. A collection of her writings, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism,was published by Knopf in 1994. In February 2001, Random House will publish Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture.Born in New York City, she was educated at Harvard and the Columbia School of the Arts and has taught poetry at Barnard College and the 92nd Street Y.