Kit Reed was born at San Diego, California. Her first short story - "The Wait" (1958) - was published by Anthony Boucher. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of a five-year grant literary from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. The New York Times Book Review says this about her short fiction: "Reed has a prose style that's pure dry ice, displayed in dystopian stories that specialize in bitterness and dislocation."

Her stories have appeared in venues ranging from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to the Yale Review and the Kenyon Review, and have been widely anthologized. Many of her stories are published as feminist science fiction and she has been nominated for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award three times. Her novel, Thinner Than Thou, was given the ALA Alex Award by the YALA. She is Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.