Pagan Kennedy

Pagan Kennedy (born c. 1963)^[1] is an American columnist and author, and pioneer of the 1990s zine movement.^[2]

She has written ten books in a variety of genres,^[3] was a regular contributor to Boston Globe, and has published articles in dozens of magazines and newspapers.^[4][5] In 2012–13, she was a The New York Times Magazine columnist.

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.^{[citation needed]}

Kennedy's autobiographical zine Pagan's Head detailed her life during her twenties.^[1]

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).^[6]

In July 2012, Kennedy was named design columnist for The New York Times Magazine.^[7] Her column, "Who Made That", detailed the origins of a wide variety of things, such as the cubicle^[8] and the home pregnancy test.^[9] Kennedy resigned from the column after signing a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to write a book, Inventology.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[10][11][12] It led to a revival of interest surrounding Marty Goddard's story, including the auction of an early rape kit at Sotheby's.^[13] Kennedy went on to write a full-length book about the rape kit, which is forthcoming from Vintage Books in 2025.^[14]

Kennedy was a visiting professor of creative writing at Dartmouth College,^[15] and taught fiction and nonfiction writing at Boston College, Johns Hopkins University, and many other conferences and residencies.

An ovarian cancer survivor,^[16] 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.^[17]

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. ^{[citation needed]}

• 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

This section lacks ISBNs for the books listed. Please help add the ISBNs or run the citation bot. (January 2014)

• —— (1995). Spinsters. High Risk Books. ISBN 9781852424053.
• —— (1998). The Exes. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684834818.
• —— (2006). Confessions of a Memory Eater (paperback 1st ed.). Leapfrog Press. ISBN 9780972898485.^[18]

• Stripping, and other stories (Serpent's Tail, 1994 ISBN 9781852423223)

• Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970s (St. Martin's Press, 1994 ISBN 9780312105259, 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 ISBN 9781939650108)
• Pagan Kennedy's Living: Handbook for Ageing Hipsters (1997, reprinted by SFWP 2015, ISBN 9781939650504)
• Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo (2002, reprinted by SFWP 2013, ISBN 9780988225268)^[19][20]
• The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2007 ISBN 9781596910157)^[21]
• The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories (SFWP, 2008 ISBN 9780977679935)
• Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 ISBN 9780544324008)
• The Secret History of the Rape Kit:The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story (Vintage Books, 2025 ISBN 0593314719)

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

• Elvis's Bathroom (1989)

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