Kailee Pedersen was adopted from Nanning in 1996 and grew up in Nebraska. She graduated from Columbia University in 2017 with a B.A. in Classics, specialising in Ancient Greek. In 2015, she received an Individual Artist Fellowship in Nonfiction from the Nebraska Arts Council. She is a two-time honorable mention for the Otherwise Fellowship. Other awards include first place in New South's 2017 Prose Contest, the Davidson Fellowship in Literature, a 2017 nomination for the Best of the Net anthology, two Pushcart nominations, and the Oscar Wilde Award.