Kiley Reid: ‘I’m a writer, not a spokesperson’

Bestselling author Kiley Reid’s early attempts to get published were met with a ‘flat out no’ Interview Reid’s first novel ‘Such a Fun Age’ was a literary sensation. As she publishes her second, she talks about cash, class and motherhood Six years ago, the author Kiley Reid was an unknown quantity, with several unpublished books and a slew of jobs under her belt. She had no clear career path. “I shopped one of those novels around to agents and I didn’t even get “almost” or “try again” replies. It was just flat out ‘no’.” During her twenties, the theatre graduate, now 36, did “maybe 40 or 50 different jobs”, ranging from nanny to chocolate salesperson to magician’s assistant. “That was fun – I got sawn in half. People would say to me all the time, ‘but what do you really want to do?’ And sometimes I thought, hang on, what if this was what I really wanted to do? I’ve been writing stories since I was little, but I never really saw a road that would lead directly to me being able to write professionally.” Then in 2017, having realised she’d rather write than act, she started a Master’s at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and sold her debut Such a Fun Age , the tale of a white family and their black babysitter, published in 2019. ‘Such a Fun Age’ was a global bestseller and longlisted for the Booker Prize Such a Fun Age is one of my favourite books of recent years, an absolute hoot with prose that slips down so easily at first you almost don’t notice the weighty examination of race and privilege that will stick in your mind for a long time afterwards. It became a global bestseller, was promptly optioned for film (Reid is writing the screenplay) and was longlisted for the Booker Prize . “My six-year-old self didn’t know what the Booker was, so she wouldn’t be that impressed. She would, however, be delighted that I get to write stories for a living.” When I meet her, over video, Reid is exceedingly […]

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