Come and Get It

Kiley Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age, was lauded upon its release in 2020, earning strong reviews and a spot on the New York Times best-seller list. Centered around a Black babysitter who is wrongly accused of kidnapping a white baby, the novel explores class and racial dynamics in the millennial era. Reid started writing this novel before entering the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, having worked as a babysitter for six years in Manhattan.

Come and Get It is born out of similar circumstances: Reid came upon the premise for the novel while conducting interviews with undergraduate students about their relationship to wealth and status. In one case, an interviewee had mentioned that she had received a “practice paycheck” from her father, which is a detail that Reid directly transplants into the first chapter of her novel (Liu, Rebecca. “‘Money Runs Our Lives’: Novelist Kiley Reid on Education, Excess and What Makes Us Squirm.” The Guardian, 20 Jan. 2024). Reid is also aware of the complex social dynamics that dictate academic life. During her graduate studies in Iowa, she taught an undergraduate-level writing class. Notably, one of the book’s central characters, Kennedy Washburn, begins her story at the University of Iowa before moving to the University of Arkansas and is inspired to pursue writing with the encouragement of a graduate-level teacher.