Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Kat graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where she earned a bachelor's degree in molecular biology. She worked as a lab technologist at Harvard Medical School then attended the University of Utah School of Medicine for graduate school, where she earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry for her work on RNA editing enzymes. After graduate school, Kat was a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, where she studied the assembly of ribonucleoprotein complexes involved in developmental switches in nematodes and yeast. After long days working in the lab, she would read poetry into the early morning hours. She read poetry for twenty years before she attempted to write her own poems as part of a journey of self-discovery from endured hardship and loss. Kat wrote her first book Moon Full of Moons (2015) prior to sending a single poem to a journal or having another poet read it, because she didn't know that's how it's done.
In her first decade of writing, Kat's poems have been published internationally by more than 125 journals, anthologies, and other venues. Kat is a Founding Co-Editor of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem and their first anthology SEA CHANGE (Whiptail Press and Red Moon Press, 2024). Kat remains active in the poetry community through editorships, judgeships, and craft essays.
BOOKS and CHAPBOOKS: no matter how it ends a bluebird's song (Rattle, 2025); helium moon (Origami Poetry Press, 2021); Stumbling Toward Happiness: Haibun and Hybrid Poems (29 Trees, 2019); Small Stones from the River: Meditations and Micropoems (29 Trees, 2017); Moon Full of Moons (29 Trees, 2015).
EDITORSHIPS: Co-Founder and Co-Editor, Whiptail: Journal of the Single-Line Poem, 2021 – present; Associate Editor, Sonic Boom, 2022 – 2023; Guest Co-Editor, Blo͞o Outlier Journal, issue 2 (haibun), 2021.
ANTHOLOGIES (CO-EDITOR): Sea Change: An Anthology of Single-Line Poems (Whiptail Press & Red Moon Press, 2024) (co-edited with Robin Smith; foreword by Jim Kacian)
JUDGESHIPS: Panelist, The Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Distinguished Books Award, 2021–2024; Co-Judge (with Matthew Paul), Haiku Society of America, Harold G. Henderson Haiku Contest, 2022; Co-Founder and Panelist, Trailblazer Contest, 2021, 2023.
SELECTED NOMINATIONS: Nominated for Pushcart Prize for Poetry (Rattle, 2023); Nominated for Best Small Fictions for haibun (Modern Haiku, 2023); Nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry (Sonic Boom, 2021); Nominated for the Best of the New for haibun (Human/Kind Journal, 2019).
SELECTED INTERVIEWS: "Haiku Poet Interviews" with Jacob Salzer Frogpond Volume 47:3 Autumn 2024; "Experimental Haibun" episode 72 of The Poetry Space podcast by Katie Dozier and Timothy Green (Aug 2, 2024); New to Haiku: Advice for Beginners, with Julie Bloss Kelsey, The Haiku Foundation series (June 5, 2022); Featured poet on Rattlecast 8 podcast with Timothy Green (Rattle Magazine, September 10, 2019); “Shoreline Poet Sharing Her Work in Random Acts of Kindness” ZIP06 and Connecticut shoreline newspapers (November 2017) Shore Publishing; Featured poet on the nationally syndicated poetry radio podcast “Saving the Planet: An Overview of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” Georgia State University radio 88.5 FM in Atlanta, GA (multiple airings, 2023).
SELECTED ESSAYS: The Haiku Foundation's New to Haiku series: "Reading One-Line Haiku with Kat and Robin" (co-written with Robin Smith), 2022-2023; "Structure: Haibun’s Fourth Element. An Exploration through Two Favorites", Kat Lehmann, Contemporary Haibun Online 18:2 (2022); "Lizard Lounge," a haiku and poetry commentary blog co-written with Robin Smith, whiptail: journal of the single-line poem, (2021-present); "Haiku: Walking the Fine Line", Kat Lehmann and Robin Smith. Originally published in the Haiku Society of America newsletter feature Haiku Spotlight (December 5, 2021).
In 2017, Kat founded "Ripples of Kindness", a poetry outreach and public giving project in which signed copies of her book of short meditations (Small Stones from the River, 2017) are placed in public spaces around the world for strangers to find with the idea that we all can do good things, just by doing them. As of 2024, books have been gifted in 18 countries and 18 US states. https://katlehmann.weebly.com/ripples-of...
