American poet and memoirist will speak at University of Richmond

January 19, 2009

American poet and memoirist Katy Lederer will speak at the University of Richmond Jan. 29 in Weinstein Hall's Brown-Alley Room at 8 p.m. Her appearance is part of the English Department Writers' Series and is free and open to the public.

Lederer will read from her most recent work, "The Heaven-Sent Leaf," a collection of poetry inspired by her time working in Manhattan for D.E. Shaw, one of the world's largest hedge funds. "The book explores not just economic bubbles but metaphysical bubbles—the highs and lows of love, religious ecstasy and aesthetic rapture," says The New Yorker's Rebecca Rothbaum.

Prior to her six years with Shaw, Lederer published "Winter Sex," another book of poetry and her memoir, "Poker Face: Girlhood Among Gamblers." "Poker Face" was included in Publishers Weekly's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and named one of the best books of 2003 by Esquire magazine.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Iowa's Writers' Workshop, Lederer is the poetry editor of Fence magazine.

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