From its explosive opening scene to its fresh perspectives on racial and class tensions, Kiley Reid's Such a Fun Age was a breakout debut. Longlisted for the Booker Prize and now in development as a film, it marked the arrival of a singular new voice and made its author a star. Now, Reid’s highly anticipated second novel is here. Set at the University of Arkansas, Come and Get It is a fly-on-the-wall look at college life, replete with indelible characters and provocative themes of money and class. Here, the author opens up about how the novel’s unique setting and multiple points of view fuel its propulsive plot.
Tricia Ford: What led you to set the story in Arkansas? Could it be a college anywhere, or is there something distinctly Southern that you wanted to explore?
Kiley Reid: I lived in Arkansas from August 2016 to August 2017. I fell in love with it and it is still possibly my favorite American city. Fayetteville is definitely distinctive in its charms, but I was also drawn to the fact that many people who live there, or in other Southern cities, find it distinctively not Southern. I interviewed an alumni from Clemson who said, "Oh, Fayetteville? That's not the South South." I was really interested in this mindset where a place is geographically southern but—for many—not beholden to a Southern philosophy, per se.
What about life in a college dorm intrigued you? How does this type of setting effect the characters and their coming-of-age journeys?
Dorms are the places where so many students are living alone for the first time. They're trying on different personalities and making relationships on their own and learning if what they do in private is cool or gross or normal. The setting has a claustrophobic effect on many of the characters. Millie is an RA and she has to work where she lives. Kennedy, a transfer student, is friendless and lonely, and having a single room within a dorm should be a luxury, but instead it keeps her siloed in a way that snowballs and crashes.
The story takes place in 2017—safely before the Covid-19 pandemic, with the lockdowns and remote learning it brought to colleges. Could this story be told in the same way today, post-Covid?
I don't believe it could. There are so many practices in place to keep students safe, and my characters would have lots of opinions on these protocols. Writing a hyper-realistic novel based any time after 2020 would require the author to accurately depict how the pandemic affected their characters and their worlds.
Without wanting to give too much away, there is a “fly on the wall” aspect to the story. As a writer who is adept at creating character-driven stories and seemingly lets no detail go unnoticed, have you ever used eavesdropping as a part of your writing prep and research? Where do you find your characters?
An essential part to being a writer is being a good listener. This is to say that yes, I eavesdrop all the time. My characters arrive in a number of ways, and many times it's through an interesting or bizarre thing I heard, or a particular way a stranger said something. Other times, characters are formed in response to already existing characters. In Come and Get It, I asked myself, "Who would be the absolute worst roommates for Kennedy?" Peyton and Tyler were the answers. When I think of being inspired by dialogue I always think of the short story "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolf, and I'm always searching for that same moment of inspiration where you can come online.
We couldn’t be more thrilled that Nicole Lewis, who narrated Such a Fun Age, is also the voice of Come and Get It. What are you most looking forward to about her performance?
I was so excited to have Nicole once again. She is so skilled, and with the amount of characters in this novel, I knew she would be the one to give each of them depth and nuance. She also has a really tender tone to her voice and I feel incredibly lucky to have her on this team.
Author photo by David Goddard
