Kit Reed

Kit Reed died on Sunday, Sept. 24, in Los Angeles, Calif., at the age of 85. After several post-college years as an award-winning journalist, Kit Reed moved to Middletown in 1960 when her husband, Joe Reed, took a position with Wesleyan’s English Department. Kit Reed became a visiting professor of English in 1974, an adjunct professor of English in 1987, and resident writer in 2008. A former Guggenheim fellow, Reed was the first American recipient of an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. Her work has been nominated for the Locus Award, the Campbell Award, the World Fantasy…

In this issue of the Wesleyan Connection, we speak with Kit Reed, resident writer in the English Department. Reed recently published two new books, Son of Destruction (Severn House), in which a reporter searches for his father and winds up investigating cases of human spontaneous combustion; and The Story Until Now (Wesleyan University Press), a rich collection of 35 stories that displays the range and complexity of her work. In a recent review of Reed’s two books in The New York Times, thriller writer Chelsea Cain wrote: “Reed finds humanity in the most fantastic places. She does it without pretension.…

Kit Reed, resident writer in the English Department, is the author of Son of Destruction, published by Severn House (U.K.) in October 2012. The U.S. version will be released in March 2013. When his mother dies, Dan Carteret has only two leads to the identity of his father: a photograph of four young men, and a newspaper cutting showing the remains of a victim of spontaneous human combustion. Carteret travels to his mother's hometown of Fort Jude and discovers that three cases of spontaneous combustion have occurred there in the recent past. In the search for his father, he confronts…

Resident Writer Kit Reed has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Her book, What Wolves Know, published in spring 2011 by PS Publishing, was nominated in the category of Single Author Collection. What Wolves Know is a dystopian thriller; a collection of stories, including tales of mothers who are monstrous in their maternalness, families on the brink of implosion, and children mutated by parental pressure. The title story is about a boy raised by wolves who struggles to adapt to the modern world. Reed has published 22 novels and more than 100 short stories. More information about her work is available on…

Resident Writer Reed Remembered for being a Fierce Advocate for Students, Fiction

5 Questions With . . . Resident Writer Kit Reed on New Books

Reed’s Son of Destruction Published

Book by Writer-in-Residence Reed Nominated for Shirley Jackson Award