Growing up in Western Pennsylvania as a preacher’s kid with a mild hearing impairment came with its challenges, Pitt Associate Professor of English Shannon Reed got by with books and a keen sense of humor. Her love of reading and droll wit are amply demonstrated in her entertaining new book, “Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries and Just One More Page Before Lights Out.’’
Reed is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs" and "Daily Shouts" columns, as well as to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, where her "If People Talked to Other Professionals the Way They Talk to Teachers" was the most read piece in 2018. More recently, her work was one of the most shared pieces in 2022, and another piece was in the top 3 for 2023. For Buzzfeed, she wrote the (in)famous piece, "If Jane Austen Got Feedback From Some Guy in a Writing Workshop." Reed contributes book reviews and op-eds to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her essays have been published in The Paris Review, Slate, Guernica, Vela, Longreads, Ozy, The Guardian, LitHub, Vulture, and The Washington Post. Her fiction appeared in Mud River Journal, Kweli Journal and Litro Fiction, among others. Her plays have been performed or read in New York, Pittsburgh, Denver, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, and she has received support from The Heinz Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Foundation, as well as the European Studies Center at Pitt.