Kathy Oltion currently works in a medical laboratory in Eugene, Oregon, for which the biochemical training provided the subject of her Polyphony piece. She writes when she's not at the lab, or digging in the garden or playing clarinet or guitar. She is a member of the Eugene Wordos Workshop.

Kathy is a two-time winner in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest. Her fiction has also appeared in Analog and One Evening a Year, an anthology of winter holiday short-short stories. Her first novel, The Flaming Arrow, is a collaboration with her husband, Jerry, in the Star Trek: New Earth series. Her most recent published story, "The Cat and the Pendulum," is in the November 2002 issue of Analog.