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 the Boston Globe, and has published articles in dozens of magazines and newspapers.^[4][5] In 2012–13, she was a New York Times Magazine columnist.

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. ^{[citation needed]}

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]

An ovarian cancer survivor,^[15] 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.^[16]

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]}