About

Gillian Lynn Katz grew up in Johannesburg South Africa during the Apartheid Era, and immigrated to New York as a teenager in 1966 with her family. She has published three books: Portrait, (Kelsay Books 2020), Kaleidoscope,(Finishing Line Press 2012), and Witness to the Birth and Death of My Country, (GFI Press1999).

Her poetry appeared in several magazines including Inkwell, The Westchester Review, Epiphany, and Let the Poets Speak. She has also been featured in several anthologies: Magnum Opus 2019, Austin International Poetry Festival 2017, Best Emerging Poets 2017, Across the Long Bridge 2006.

In 2012 she won second place for her poem “Midnight” in the Greenburgh Poetry Contest. She also won second place for her poem “Immigrant” in Italics Mine in 2021. She has a Master of Arts in Writing from Manhattanville College, a BA in Literature from Purchase College, and a BS in Communications from Iona College. She also studied at Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, The Writers Studio, Gotham Writer’s Workshop, and
has a Certificate in Screenwriting from UCLA Extension.

Her book PORTRAIT includes over twenty poems about her experiences growing up under Apartheid in South Africa. In her poem Robben Island Ms. Katz accounts of her visit to Mandela’s prison cell, and writes of Mandela “he was more prince than prisoner.” She reflects on motherhood in several other poems, and in her poem Portrait, the title of this collection, she writes about breaking the cycle of abuse in the next generation. In
her prize winning poem Midnight the teenage author writes that she “needed questions answered.” In these poems Ms. Katz grapples with the trauma of emigration and the difficulties of creating a sense of home in a new country.

Her book WITNESS TO THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF MY COUNTRY is a collection of poetry, essays and fiction. It is available on her website: gillianlynnkatz.net and Amazon.com. Each piece in that book has been published in magazines: Inkwell, AIM, Copperfield Review, Struggle, Nostalgically, Tickled by Thunder, and the Westchester Gannnett newspapers. She has also published poetry in various journals and
anthologies.

She has taught creative writing and poetry to teens at the JCC Mid-Westchester in Scarsdale, NY. For four years she taught Jewish Literature and Creative Writing to teenagers at the Beth El Hebrew High School in New Rochelle, NY. She gives talks and readings of her poetry throughout Westchester County, New York, where she lives with her husband.