Steve Katz (1935-2019) was an American post-modern/avant-garde writer. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Cornell University in 1956 and his master of arts degree from the University of Oregon in 1959. He taught creative writing at the English Language Institute and the University of Maryland Overseas (both in Italy), Cornell University, the University of Iowa, Brooklyn College, Queens College, and Notre Dame University. In 1978, he became Director of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Katz was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants (1976 and 1981), and a Creative Artists Public Service grant (1976). Has also worked for the Forest Service in Idaho, in a quicksilver mine in Nevada, and on dairy farms in New York State. He started teaching Tai Chi Chuan in1971.At Cornell in the 1950s, Katz encountered Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon, and later roomed at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan where he met Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol, John Ashbery, George Plimpton, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Philip Glass, and countless other artists and scenesters of the 1960s and '70s.Literary critic Jerome Klinkowitz wrote that Katz has "pushed innovation farther than any of his contemporaries," and W. C. Bamburger dubbed him "the most important living American novelist." (43 Views of Steve Katz, Popular Writers of Today, vol. 69, Borgo Press, 2007)
