Face to face

Kate Light is a poet, librettist, and lyricist in New York City. She is also a professional violinist.

Kate's work include the libretto of The Life and Love of Joe Coogan, an opera adapted from an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show (composer: Paul Salerni); Metamorphoses, a musical-in-progress based on Ovid’s life and work (composer, Masatora Goya); the texts of Oceanophony and Einstein’s Mozart: Two Geniuses, for narrator and musicians; and four volumes of poetry, Einstein’s Mozart: Two Geniuses,Gravity’s Dream (Donald Justice Award), Open Slowly, and The Laws of Falling Bodies (Nicholas Roerich Prize, Story Line Press). Her lyrics for the song “Here Beside Me” are heard in Disney’s Mulan II.

As narrator of her pieces, Kate has appeared with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Louisville Orchestra, Colorado Chamber Players, and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Also known for her lively poetry readings, her recent engagements include the New York Times’ “Great Read in the Park,” Spoleto Festival USA, Dodge Poetry Festival, 3rd Annual DC International Poetry Festival, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, Wordstock Festival at Penn State University, Woodstock Poetry Festival, Cal State LA, Colorado College, Fairfield, Cornell, Vanderbilt, CW Post, West Chester, and Lehigh Universities, and the Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Kate has also been Visiting Professor at Cornell University and twice at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo.

Kate's poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Dark Horse, Hudson Review, New York Sun, Washington Post Book World, Feminist Studies, and many other publications, and was featured four times on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Her work is included in the anthologies The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Western Wind, Poetry Daily, and Good Poems for Hard Times (edited by Keillor), among others. An alumnus of the Eastman School of Music, Hunter College, and the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, Kate is a 2011-2012 Resident Artist with American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program.