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Kailee Pedersen

Biography

Kailee Pedersen

Kailee Pedersen writes haunted, unsettling speculative fiction. She graduated with a BA in classics from Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek. Kailee was adopted from Nanning, China and grew up in Nebraska, where her family owns a farm. She is the author of the queer poetry chapbook PASTORALE and the novel SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS, which was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2024 and a finalist for Best Horror at the 2025 Libby Book Awards. When not scribbling down her next book, you can catch her studying opera performance at the Mozarteum University, playing video games, or working as a software engineer in New York City. THE MINIMALIST is her second novel.

Kailee Pedersen

Books by Kailee Pedersen

The Minimalist
by Kailee Pedersen - Fiction, Horror, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

As the last and greatest student of famed minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss’ rise to prominence in the insular world of classical music has long been assured. When Ryder dies unexpectedly, she inherits everything --- including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition. Haunted by memories of her tragic romance with Ryder’s late son, Oliver, Mia leaves her girlfriend behind and returns to Ryder’s home to finish his last work. There, she is forced to confront her complex relationship with Ryder, who hid his Jewish and gay identities to become one of the most important 20th-century American composers; her lingering guilt over Oliver’s suicide; and her own musical ambition as the manuscript begins to exert a disturbing, mesmerizing hold over her.