Hi, I’m Katherine! I’m a fact checker at The New Yorker. I was previously an assistant editor at The Atlantic, where I worked on the print magazine for nearly four years; I also edited poetry and read short story submissions.

I’ve fact-checked everything from magazine features to newsletters, tackling legally-sensitive topics and translated reporting. I’m also well-versed in investigative research—I spent around a year as a reporting partner to McKay Coppins for his profile of James Murdoch and surfaced court documents on sexual assault for Jenisha Watts’ cover story about her upbringing in Kentucky, among other projects.

I began my career in editorial operations, and know my way around an Airtable integration (or six). I’m fluent in Chinese, conversational (enough) in French, and live in Brooklyn. I write fiction.

My work can be found in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. A version of me can be found on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

Selected Work

WRITING

Culture/Technology

  • AI Astrology Is Getting a Little Too Personal, The Atlantic

  • Even Influencers Are Scared of the Internet, The Atlantic

  • The Influencer Economy Is Warping the American Dream, The Atlantic [for The Atlantic’s flagship newsletter]

  • Watching Opera on a Jumbotron, The Atlantic

Fiction

  • How to Thrive in a Dying World, The Atlantic [book review of C Pam Zhang’s Land of Milk and Honey]

  • Q&A: Ben Okri on Manipulating Reality, The Atlantic

  • Q&A: Mona Simpson on the Dissonance Between Reality and Memory, The Atlantic

  • Q&A: Elaine Hsieh Chou on the Ethics of ‘Trauma Porn,’ The Atlantic

Essays

CHECKING & RESEARCH

  • I’ve fact-checked print features including this cover story by J. Michael Luttig on Trump’s desire for a third term and this hilarious piece by Alexandra Petri on her one-woman attempt to replace the bureaucracy.

  • I checked this dispatch about what the Founding Fathers probably ate, and this story about a pilot who helps people conquer their fear of flying. I also tackled this piece about the bluffing game mheibes, which involved reporting in Arabic. I’ve also navigated my fair share of quick-turn newsletters, and the delicate dance of fact-checking fiction and poetry.

  • For about a year, I was a reporting partner on this cover story about James Murdoch, working alongside McKay Coppins. This included briefings en route to interviews with sources and compiling dozens of pages in targeted research memos.

  • As part of Jenisha Watts’ cover story about her childhood in Kentucky, I worked on record requests to verify the facts of an assault. I called courts, police departments, social services, and libraries, and ultimately surfaced both the needed documents and additional files that altered the ending of the piece.

  • For Jeffrey Goldberg’s profile of Mark Milley, I read through relevant major books on the topic and compiled a dossier of existing reporting and variations across books to assist in the interview process.

POETRY & FICTION

I edited and curated the weekly web poetry section for The Atlantic in 2025 (with the wonderful Walt Hunter). Here is a selection of poems I worked on:

I also read countless fiction submissions and helped edit this 2023 flash fiction project, which included writers such as Tess Gunty and Kiese Laymon.

Get in touch!