Pagan Kennedy


Pagan Kennedy 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.
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 was published by Vintage Books in January 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.