Kailee Pedersen

Kailee Pedersen is an American author of unsettling speculative fiction. She graduated with a BA in classics from Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek, and was adopted from Nanning, China, growing up on her family's farm in Nebraska. Her debut novel, Sacrificial Animals (2024), was named one of the New York Public Library's Best Books of 2024 and was a finalist for Best Horror at the 2025 Libby Book Awards; she is also the author of the poetry chapbook Pastorale. Pedersen works as a software engineer in New York City and studies opera performance at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg alongside her writing. She is represented by Paul Lucas of Regal Hoffmann & Associates.