Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo received a BA in creative writing with honors at Western Washington University, and an MFA in creative writing program at the University of Washington, where she taught poetry and studied with Heather McHugh, David Shields, and Rick Kenney. She is the author of two cookbooks, Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour, and Butter and A Commonplace Book of Pie. Her essay about listening through hearing loss, “The Loudproof Room,” originally published in New England Review, is forthcoming from Best American Essays 2015. Other essays and poems have appeared in Best New Poets, The Rumpus, Gastronomica, Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review, Poetry Northwest, Willow Springs, AGNI, and High Desert Journal. She is the recipient of a 4Culture grant, residencies from Soapstone, and Shotpouch Creek, as well as nominations for the James W. Ray Award and the Pushcart Prize.

Kate received 2015 GAP Award funding to help cover expenses for a residency at Vermont Studio Center during the winter of 2016 where she will develop more essays for her collection of works: “The Loudproof Room, a memoir of listening through hearing loss,” a book-length project that began in food writing but has manifested as literary work as the mistranslations and mishearings that resulted from her disability informed her artistic practice.