Kay Nolte Smith (July 4, 1932 – September 25, 1993) was an American novelist, essayist, and translator.
She was for a time friendly with the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, who was her leading literary and philosophical influence.
Smith's second novel, Catching Fire, was written in 1982 and is set in the world of the New York theater, with an anti-trade union political stance.
[4] In 1985, just a year after her third novel, Elegy for a Soprano was written as a roman a clef inspired by Rand, Nathaniel Branden, and the circle around them.
Elegy for a Soprano also portrays the life of Jewish Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia and Norway.