Katha Pollit is an author, widely published essayist, feminist and freethinker who received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard and her Masters of Fine Arts degree from Columbia. Her book of poems, Antarctic Traveler, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her book of essays is titled Reasonable Creatures (Knopf). She lives in New York City.

Pollitt's column "Subject To Debate" appears regularly in The Nation, a weekly magazine. She was named Freethought Heroine by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on September 29, 1995, at its annual convention meeting that year in Denver, and accepted in person. Foundation president Anne Gaylor invited her to receive the award after hearing her identify herself openly as an atheist on several national talkshows. She was introduced by Foundation officer Catherine Fahringer, an avid admirer of her columns.

In 2001, Katha Pollitt was also given the Emperor Has No Clothes Award.