Writing

Kathleen Hale’s reporting, essays, criticism, interviews, and fiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, ELLE, GQ, Vogue, VICE, Hazlitt, CrimeReads, The Believer, and elsewhere. Published writing is organized below by form, with the most recent work first. Online pieces are linked; work no longer available online remains listed as part of the archive.

Selected Pieces

The Dark Origins of the True-Crime Frenzy at CrimeCon — Vanity Fair

Gabby Petito’s Life With—And Death By—Brian Laundrie — Vanity Fair

Escaping Slenderman’s Shadow: The Release of Morgan Geyser — CrimeReads

The Coyote Curriculum — REEL

The Robots Think Autistic Writers Are Robots — Autism Motherlode

Murder on Union Hill Road — Hazlitt

Browse All Writing

Autism, Neurodiversity & Education

• The Robots Think Autistic Writers Are Robots — Autism Motherlode, 2026.
• Bryan Kohberger Has Eight Diagnoses??? — Autism Motherlode, 2026.
• “Person With Lesbianism” — Autism Motherlode, 2026.
• Why autistic people accept self-diagnosis (and you should too) — Autism Motherlode, 2026.
• The Coyote Curriculum: How Autistic Special Interests Become Strengths, and What Parents Can Do — REEL, 2026.
• To the Parent Holding Their Child’s Neuropsych Report — Autism Motherlode, 2026.
• “About Me” — AKA: How I (Crash) Landed Here — Autism Motherlode, 2026.

Reported Features & True Crime

• Escaping Slenderman’s Shadow: The Release of Morgan Geyser — CrimeReads, 2025.
• The Dark Origins of the True-Crime Frenzy at CrimeCon — Vanity Fair, 2024.
• Idaho Murders: As a Small Town Grapples With Sinister Rumors, Media’s True-Crime Obsession Grows — Vanity Fair, 2023.
• The Idaho Murders, Part 1: How 4 College Kids Lived and Loved — Vanity Fair, 2023.
• Gabby Petito’s Life With—And Death By—Brian Laundrie — Vanity Fair, 2022.
• Living with Slenderman — Hazlitt, 2018.
• Murder on Union Hill Road — Hazlitt, 2017.
• Allergic to life: the Arizona residents ‘sensitive to the whole world’ — The Guardian, 2016.
• What Wisconsin’s Teenage Girls Think About the Slender Man Stabbing — VICE, 2014.

Cultural Reporting

• Dr Orgasm will see you now: is the O-Shot what women need for better sex? — The Guardian, 2016.
• The Human Repair Shop — Hazlitt, 2015.

Essays & Memoir

• Kathleen Hale’s Playlist for Her Book “Slenderman” — Largehearted Boy, 2022.
• Will Float Tanks Help You Forget the Problems of the World? — GQ, 2017.
• First I Got Pregnant. Then I Decided to Kill the Mountain Lion. — ELLE, 2017.
• I felt the love—finally—at the Women’s March, but what do we do tomorrow? — The Guardian, 2017.
• 2016: a year of utter hell—but let’s raise a toast to it anyway — The Guardian, 2016.
• Through the Looking Glass — The Mary Review, 2016 (Longform archive).
• Surviving the Love Bomb — Hazlitt, 2016.
• This Is The Story Of A Happy Reader — The Hairpin, 2014.
• ‘Am I being catfished?’ An author confronts her number one online critic — The Guardian, 2014.
• Quit Everything — in Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York, 2014.
• Dress Your Family In Your Lover’s Shoes — The Hairpin, 2014.
• Desperately Seeking Psychics — ELLE, 2014.
• Prey — Hazlitt, 2014; adapted as From prey to predator: how I got justice after sexual assault for The Guardian and From Prey to Predator: Overcoming My Rape for ELLE.
• Privileged — Thought Catalog, 2013.

Profiles & Conversations

• ‘A Tiny Inward Scream is the Appropriate Response to Exposure’: An Interview with Maile Meloy — Hazlitt, 2016.
• ‘Empathy Implicates You’: An Interview with Bill Hader — Hazlitt, 2016.
• ‘The Trick is to Think of Someone From the Inside Out’: An Interview with Jesse Eisenberg — Hazlitt, 2016.
• Carrie Brownstein: ‘There was so much I wanted to destroy’ — The Guardian, 2015.
• An Interview with Sheila Nevins — The Believer, 2015.
• Feeling Fear Between the Lines: An Interview with David Lagercrantz — Hazlitt, 2015.
• You’re Not the Only One With a Crush on Trivago Guy — ELLE, 2015.
• Linda Cardellini Is Used to Being Called a Homewrecker — ELLE, 2015.
• Spending the Day With L.A.’s Ethical Taxidermist — ELLE, 2015.
• ‘Yoga Pants are Ruining Women’ and Other Style Advice From Fran Lebowitz — ELLE, 2015.

Culture, Criticism & Humor

• The State of the Crime Novel, Part 2: A Roundtable Discussion with the Edgar Nominees — CrimeReads, 2023 (roundtable contribution).
• A Reading List of Psychopathic Women — CrimeReads, 2022.
• Frankie Shaw’s SMILF Makes a Powerful Statement for Female Directors — Vogue, 2017.
• Is Teenage Plastic Surgery a Feminist Act? — Harper’s Bazaar, 2017.
• The secret lives of movie-star newborns: who are they, and what is all that goo? — The Guardian, 2016.
• ‘Sweat is just your fat crying’ and other things my yoga teacher says — The Guardian, 2016.
• Good Reads Gone Bad — Hazlitt, 2015.
• My Style Icon: In Appreciation of ’90s Winona Ryder — ELLE, 2015.
• A User’s Guide to Raising Your New Puppy While Remaining Sort Of Sane — The Hairpin, 2015 (with Annamarie Tendler).
• What Makes Us Feel Better When We’re Sad? — The Hairpin, 2014 (roundup contribution).
• How To Change Your Name In 41 Easy Steps — The Hairpin, 2014.
• Your Exotic Pet Doesn’t Love You — VICE, 2014.
• I Hunted Feral Hogs in Florida as a Favor to the World — VICE, 2014.
• A Young Adult Author’s Fantastic Crusade to Defend Literature’s Most Maligned Genre† — Nerve, 2014.

Fiction & Early Work

• The Corn — SmokeLong Quarterly, 2010.
• The Tub Is Just the Safest Place — Hazlitt, 2014.
• FICTION: Finagled — The Harvard Crimson, 2009.
• The One About Us — The Harvard Advocate, 2009; reprinted in Passages North, 2009‡.
• Surviving Coyote‡ — The Harvard Advocate, 2008.
• Lessons in Love — The Harvard Crimson, 2008.
• Nurse Ratched Lives at UHS — The Harvard Crimson, 2007.
• Find Your Husband‡ — North Central Review, 2007.
• From, Nica Lorber‡ — The Harvard Advocate, 2007.
• God, Abstinence Is Sexy — The Harvard Crimson, 2007.
• The Story of How I Saved Mama‡ — The Harvard Advocate, 2006.