Pamela Katz, born in New York, studied linguistics at Dartmouth and London and worked from the mid-1980s as a camera assistant on cinema productions by Martin Scorsese, Alan Parker, Mike Nichols and Spike Lee, among others. In the 1990s she turned to writing and wrote the scripts for Vivian Naefe's feature film comedy "2 Männer, 2 Frauen - 4 Probleme" ("Two Women, Two Men", 1998) and Christine Kabisch's television movie "Scheidung auf Rädern" (2000). Together with director Margarethe von Trotta, she wrote the screenplay for the multiple award-winning drama "Rosenstraße" (2003), about the so-called Rosenstraße protest, in which 'Aryan' women in Berlin protested against the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands in 1943.    

Subsequently, Katz wrote the screenplay for Trotta's TV film "Die andere Frau" ("The Other Woman", 2003), about the love affair of an unsuspecting woman with a former 'Stasi Romeo', and for "Die verlorene Zeit" ("Remembrance", 2011) by Anna Justice.    

This was followed by further collaborations with Margarethe von Trotta: "Hannah Arendt" (2012) portrays the life and work of the Jewish, German-American philosopher, theorist and journalist. Katz was nominated for the German Film Award in 2013 for her screenplay for this film. She then wrote the screenplay for Trotta's first English-language film, the romantic comedy "Forget About Nick", which was released in December 2017.

In addition to writing screenplays, Katz has also repeatedly published essay collections, short stories and novels, including "Die Seeräuberin. Ein Lotte-Lenya-Roman" (2001). Since 2006, she has been a professor in the screenwriting department at New York's Tisch School of the Arts.