Incredible Women Of 2024: Cult Author Kiley Reid
Next up in our Incredible Women of 2024 series – in which we celebrate the trailblazers whose talent, energy and impact are defining the year – is the author KILEY REID. As she publishes her second novel, several years after an instant-cult debut, she speaks to KATIE BERRINGTON about following Such A Fun Age, writing real conversations, and unusual forms of flattery from readers
Releasing your debut novel is a daunting moment in an author’s career, but releasing your sophomore novel – particularly when the first has been a certified smash hit – poses its own set of pressures. But Kiley Reid, whose debut, Such A Fun Age, was the book to read of 2020, is wearing the mantle of cult author lightly as she unveils her second novel, Come And Get It.
“I think the best thing you can do as an artist is to just focus on the work and then enjoy any of the benefits that come from [releasing it] into the world,” says Reid. This is helped by the matter of timing, she considers: she started writing Come And Get It almost a year before Such A Fun Age even hit bookshelves. “In frustrating and wonderful ways, the publishing process takes a long time and I have always been pretty deep into a new project before the previous one comes out.”
Reflecting now on the major success of Such A Fun Age – it received critical acclaim, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, the TV and film rights were snapped up by Lena Waithe’s production company, and it was a pick for Reese Witherspoon’s book club – Reid is “incredibly thankful for the platform” that it brought. “And mostly for readers who have the same passion that I do for dialogue that reads the way it’s said in the real world, and discussions of money and class and healthcare.”
Come And Get It shares some of the themes that Reid tackled so astutely in her debut – those of class, racism, inequality and privilege. At the same time, “I want to be an artist who does something different every time,” she says. “I love the challenge of creating something new.” Her second book is set in a fictional college dorm at the University of Arkansas and dissects the complicated dynamics and rising tensions between a visiting professor who studies the students’ perspectives of money (and begins writing a Money Diaries-style column for Teen Vogue), a student working as a resident assistant in the dorm, and three students living in it.
Reid has a fortitude for writing conversations with a hyper-real lens. “[I wanted to] put readers in the room or on the other side of the door, like they were listening to something they wouldn’t have heard normally. I wanted it to read like a docuseries that is so accurate, it’s a bit difficult to watch.” This is particularly illuminating in a novel that taps into a formative period of life. “College is a strange time, where everything is incredibly heightened because you are making relationships and coming out on your own for the first time,” she says. “All the values and habits you have brought from your home life are being put to the test, but you’re also trying on different personalities.”
“I wasn’t aware of how mentally taxing talking about your work could be. It’s such a joy, but it is work… and I think I would have told myself to go easy
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Reid wanted the book to have a “gossipy quality” as part of this social examination. “Many of the characters spend a lot of time listening to other people. I’m a fan of gossip within certain contexts,” she considers. “Gossip is a place where we form social contracts… If you’re saying to a friend, ‘Hey, this person did this and it made me think this’, that moves you closer together. You form a contract and you silently say ‘I would never do that to you’ by listening to them. You learn about people’s values and lifestyles through those conversations.”
There might be added anticipation around a sophomore release, but there’s also the benefit of experience. “I wasn’t aware of how mentally taxing talking about your work could be,” Reid considers of what she’d like to have known first time around. “It’s a different muscle to talk about what you did. It’s such a joy, but it is work… and I think I would have told myself to go easy.”
She particularly relishes the opportunity to hear her readers’ perspectives, though. “I know the joys of [people] highlighting things in your book that you didn’t see before.” There have been more unusual forms of flattery, too. “After Such A Fun Age, a woman messaged me and said that she read my book when she was pregnant and loved the name Briar and then named her child Briar. That [couldn’t] be more of an honor, really! I mean, I can only hope that I would change the baby-name trajectory with every novel,” she laughs.
Of course, Reid is already deep into her next ventures. The Such A Fun Age movie adaptation is in the works – “We have a really great team in place and I’m getting very excited thinking of what it could look like on film” – and there are some other projects under wraps, alongside working as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, and parenting her toddler. So, when it comes to the year ahead, she is keeping her goals straightforward.
“Fewer screens. More print. Much more sleep. Going to bed early. Getting up early,” she says, simply. “I used to be the writer who wrote at midnight, thinking I was very romantic and enigmatic. No longer – I surrender myself to science. Our brains are better in the morning.”