Katherine Macfarlane

Katherine “Kat” Macfarlane is a writer, speaker, and law professor. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) when she was 13 months old, Kat’s writing touches upon every aspect of living with RA, from handling insensitive doctors to fighting for accommodations at work. Her essays have appeared in Ms., Huffington Post, BUST, The Hairpin, Northwestern Magazine, Foliate Oak, Ms. JD, xoJane, Intima, and Harvard Law School’s Bill of Health, among others. Flying Into Jerusalem, in which Kat describes discovering that RA would keep her from having children, was included in the Dinty Moore-edited anthology Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine.

As a law professor, Kat teaches and writes about the challenges faced by people with disabilities at work, in school, and in health care settings. Her groundbreaking article Disability Without Documentation was recently highlighted in the New York Times.

Kat received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Northwestern University.

She received her J.D., cum laude, from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. After graduating law school, she served as a law clerk to the Hon. Arthur Alarcón, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. Frederick Martone, U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. Kat is admitted to practice in New York (active) and California (inactive). She speaks Spanish and Italian.

Kat grew up in Rome, Italy and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and she now lives in Syracuse with her dog Cooper.