Katharine Weber’s six highly-praised and award-winning novels have made her a book club favorite. Her new work of fiction is Jane of Hearts, a story collection and a novella. Booklist called it “A scintillating collection of short stories and a novella that encompass pathos and hilarity and range from breathtakingly succinct yet richly faceted tales, like the diamonds that figure in several unexpectedly connected stories, to longer works iridescent with tangible and psychological detail.”

Her last novel, Still Life With Monkey, was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award for Fiction, The Connecticut Center for the Book Spirit Award, and the New England Society in the City of New York Book Award.  Reviews said: “A beautifully wrought paean of praise for the ordinary pleasures taken for granted by the able-bodied. In precise and often luminous prose, with intelligence and tenderness, Weber’s latest novel examines the question of what makes a life worth living.” (Washington Post),  “A deeply but delicately penetrating novel.” (New York Times Book Review),  “Stark and compelling . . . Rigorously unsentimental yet suffused with emotion: possibly the best work yet from an always stimulating writer.” (Kirkus Reviews [starred])

Katharine’s fifth novel, True Confections, the story of a chocolate candy factory in crisis, was published in 2010. Critics raved: “A great American tale” (New York Times Book Review), “Marvelous, a vividly imagined story about love, obsession and betrayal” (Boston Globe), “Katharine Weber is one of the wittiest, most stimulating novelists at work today…wonderful fun and endlessly provocative” (Chicago Tribune),”Succulently inventive” (Washington Post),”Her most delectable novel yet” (L.A. Times).

Her sixth book, a memoir called The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family’s Legacy of Infidelities, published in 2011, won raves from the critics, from Ben Brantley in the New York Times (“Ms. Weber is able to arrange words musically, so that they capture the elusive, unfinished melodies that haunt our memories of childhood”) to the Dallas Morning News (“gracefully written, poignant and droll”), the NY Daily News (“Old Scandals, what fun…the core of her tale is that of elegant sin and betrayal”), and the Boston Globe (a masterful memoir of the private world of a very public family”), among others.

All of Katharine’s books have been republished in at least one paperback edition, and all are available as e-books.

Katharine grew up in New York City and has lived in rural Connecticut since 1976, when she married the cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber.  She also spends parts of the year in West Cork, Ireland, and in London.

TEACHING

Katharine held the Richard L. Thomas Chair in Creative Writing at Kenyon College for seven years (2012-2019).  Previously, she taught creative writing at Yale University (for eight years), and was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the graduate writing program in the School of the Arts at Columbia University for six years. She has taught at various international writing workshops, from the Paris Writers Workshop several summers in a row to the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference in 2017 and the West Cork Literary Festival in Ireland in 2018.