Katharine Weber’’s fiction debut in print, the short story "Friend of the Family," appeared in The New Yorker in January, 1993. Her first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear (of which that story was a chapter), was published by Crown Publishers, Inc. in 1995 and was published in paperback by PicadorUSA in 1996. She was named by Granta to the controversial list of 50 Best Young American Novelists in 1996. Her second novel, The Music Lesson, was published by Crown Publishers, Inc. in 1999, and was published in paperback by PicadorUSA in 2000. The Music Lesson has been published in eleven foreign languages. The Little Women was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2003 and by PicadorUSA in 2004. All three novels have been named Notable Books by The New York Times Book Review. Writing in The New York Times, Richard Eder said, "Katharine Weber's novel, which stops being droll only to be funny and almost never stops being exceedingly smart, is a hermit crab. Creeping into the whelk shell of Louisa May Alcott's celebrated novel, it avails itself of the spirals to do double and triple twists inside them." Katharine’s fourth novel, Triangle, which takes up the notorious Triangle Waist company factory fire of 1911, was published in 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Katharine's maternal grandmother was the songwriter Kay Swift. Since Swift's death in 1993, Katharine has been a Trustee and the Administrator of the Kay Swift Memorial Trust, which is dedicated to preserving and promoting the music of Kay Swift. This work includes the first Broadway musical with a score by a woman, "Fine and Dandy," and several popular show tunes of the era, among them "Fine and Dandy" and "Can't We Be Friends?"

Related News
PS Classics Has New Nonprofit Arm to Record Vintage Shows; Carmello, Creel, Cantone Sing Fine and Dandy
By Kenneth Jones
26 Jan 2004

PS Classics Records Forgotten Kay Swift Musical, Fine and Dandy, With Carolee Carmello
By Kenneth Jones
23 Jun 2003

Katharine is on the staff at Star.

Katharine has taught fiction writing at Connecticut College, Yale University (for eight years), and the Paris Writers Workshop. She was the Kratz Writer in Residence at Goucher College in Spring 2006. Katharine is currently a thesis advisor for the graduate writing program in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

 
Paris Writers Workshop, July 2005
photo courtesy of Marcia Lèbre

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