Kathryn Cramer is a writer, critic, and anthologist presently co-editing the Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF series with David G. Hartwell. Her most recent historial anthologies include The Space Opera Renaissance and The Hard SF Renaissance, both co-edited with David Hartwell. Their previous hard SF anthology was The Ascent of Wonder (1994).

She was the P. Schuyler Miller Critic Guest of Honor at Confluence 2008 in Pittsburgh, PA.

She won a World Fantasy Award for best anthology for The Architecture of Fear co-edited with Peter Pautz; she was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her anthology, Walls of Fear. She also co-edited several anthologies of Christmas and fantasy stories with Hartwell.

She was a runner-up for the Pioneer Award for best essay on sf of the year, and is on the editorial board of The New York Review of Science Fiction, for which she has been nominated for the Hugo Award many times. John Clute has called her criticism "spiky" and "erudite."