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.
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 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]
—— (2006). Confessions of a Memory Eater (paperback 1st ed.). Leapfrog Press. ISBN9780972898485.[18]
Collections
Stripping, and other stories (Serpent's Tail, 1994 ISBN9781852423223)
Nonfiction
Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970s (St. Martin's Press, 1994 ISBN9780312105259, 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 ISBN9781939650108)
Pagan Kennedy's Living: Handbook for Ageing Hipsters (1997, reprinted by SFWP 2015, ISBN9781939650504)
Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo (2002, reprinted by SFWP 2013, ISBN9780988225268)[19][20]
The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2007 ISBN9781596910157)[21]
