Mattie Kahn
Writer
Thesis Title: "A Magazine of High Character": Failure, Foresight, and the Literary Project of Edgar Allan Poe
What Now: Writer
Follow Me: @mattiekahn (Twitter)
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to concentrate in History & Literature. I wanted to be able to read and write with abandon and to have permission to parse the relationship between people and their work.
So, I settled on America as an area of focus and became increasingly obsessed with the Supreme Court, obscenity trials, the vagaries of the publishing industry, and women's history. I wanted to investigate how literature—and thus, ideas about the world—traveled and ended up writing a thesis about Edgar Allan Poe's failed literary journal and his ultimately unrealized vision for American letters.
After graduation, I took a job at ELLE, where I wrote for the website about politics and pop-culture and contributed to the magazine. Then I moved to Glamour, where I ran the news and culture section and helped develop podcasts, events, and features. Now I write for The New York Times, Town & Country, Vogue, and lots of other places. My first book Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions was published in June 2023.