Pagan Kennedy

Pagan Kennedy (born c. 1963) is an American columnist and author, and pioneer of the 1990s zine movement.

She has written ten books in a variety of genres, was a regular contributor to The Boston Globe, and has published articles in dozens of magazines and newspapers. In 2012–13, she was a The New York Times Magazine columnist.

Early life and education

Born Pamela Kennedy around 1963, she grew up in suburban Washington, D.C. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1984, and later spent a year in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Johns Hopkins University.

Career

Kennedy's autobiographical zine Pagan's Head detailed her life during her twenties.

In 2007, Kennedy wrote a biography called The First Man-Made Man about Michael Dillon, a British physician and author who in the mid-1940s became the first successful case of female-to-male sex change treatment that included a phalloplasty (the surgical construction of a penis).

In July 2012, Kennedy was named design columnist for The New York Times Magazine. Her column, "Who Made That", detailed the origins of a wide variety of things, such as the cubicle and the home pregnancy test. Kennedy resigned from the column after signing a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to write a book, Inventology.

In 2020, Kennedy's investigation into the history of the first rape kit written for The New York Times, "The Rape Kit's Secret History", received national media attention. It led to a revival of interest surrounding Marty Goddard's story, including the auction of an early rape kit at Sotheby's. Kennedy went on to write a full-length book about the rape kit, which is forthcoming from Vintage Books in 2025.

Teaching

Kennedy was a visiting professor of creative writing at Dartmouth College, and taught fiction and nonfiction writing at Boston College, Johns Hopkins University, and many other conferences and residencies.

Personal life

An ovarian cancer survivor, Kennedy currently lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with her partner, Kevin Bruyneel. She previously lived with filmmaker Liz Canner, in a relationship she has described as similar to a Boston marriage.

Awards

Kennedy was a 2010 Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she was named the 2010/2011 Creative Nonfiction grant winner by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She has also been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction, a Sonora Review fiction prize, and a Smithsonian Fellowship for science writing.

• Spinsters: Barnes & Noble Discover Award winner, shortlisted for 1996 Orange Prize for Fiction
• Black Livingstone: New York Times Notable list and Massachusetts Book Award honors

Bibliography

Collections

• Stripping, and other stories (Serpent's Tail, 1994 Template:ISBN)

Nonfiction

• Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970s (St. Martin's Press, 1994 Template:ISBN, reprinted by SFWP 2015)
• Zine: How I Spent Six Years of My Life in the Underground and Finally...Found Myself...I Think (St. Martin's Press, 1995; reprinted by SFWP 2014 Template:ISBN)
• Pagan Kennedy's Living: Handbook for Ageing Hipsters (1997, reprinted by SFWP 2015, Template:ISBN)
• Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo (2002, reprinted by SFWP 2013, Template:ISBN)
• The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2007 Template:ISBN)
• The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories (SFWP, 2008 Template:ISBN)
• Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 Template:ISBN)
• The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story (Vintage Books, 2025 Template:ISBN)

Anthologies

• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Eighth Annual Collection (1995)
• The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 2 (2008)

Short stories

• Elvis's Bathroom (1989)

External links

• Pagan Kennedy on Twitter
• Website for The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex
• Profile of Kennedy