Kathryn Smith

Kathryn Smith, a native Georgian and long-time South Carolinian, is a journalist and
author of six non-fiction books as well as the co-author of five mystery novels. A
graduate of the University of Georgia Henry Grady School of Journalism, Kathryn had
successful careers in daily newspaper reporting and nonprofit management before
turning to writing full-time. Her books include The Gatekeeper, the biography of FDR’s
private secretary Marguerite LeHand, published by the Touchstone division of Simon &
Schuster in 2016; and Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre,
Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy, published in 2019 by Evening Post Books. She has
since published two more books with Evening Post that explore the history of Prohibition
in the South, Baptists and Bootleggers (2022) and Methodists and Moonshiners (2024).
Kathryn is the co-author of a series of mystery novels with Kelly Durham featuring Missy
LeHand as an amateur detective solving capers and murders in between her duties with
President Roosevelt. A popular public speaker, Kathryn has given hundreds of talks at
libraries, museums, and other venues, including the FDR Presidential Library and
Museum in Hyde Park, New York and the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia.
She often impersonates LeHand in her presentations about The Gatekeeper.
Kathryn and her husband Leo have two grown and married children and five
grandchildren. In between family visits, they fill their empty nest in Anderson, South
Carolina with a cat and a dog.