What does it all mean?

Parent Newsletter is the brainchild of Kennedy Morganfield, former Catholic schoolgirl and oldest and only daughter. Every week from kindergarten to eighth grade she brought home the school/parish newsletter, targeted at the people who pay the bills, in her homework folder. But not before she devoured its contents herself.

When she was in kindergarten, her punishments for talking back (Kennedy is still argumentative) ranged from her parents removing every book from her shelf, one by one, to the revocation of Microsoft Word privileges. Reading and writing were her whole world. Parent Newsletter is for nosy girls who were always in grown folks’ business, and to this day have too much to say about things they don’t know enough about. (It’s also an SEO nightmare.)

Kennedy is an essayist and emerging museum professional proudly hailing from the state of Missouri. For six weeks she was Class President at Smith College. She’s now getting her B.A. in American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. When Kennedy is old enough, she hopes to write the Midwestern bildungsroman the world is waiting for. She enjoys treating media consumption like a chore and standing directly in front of the microwave.

“Parent Newsletter is a place for me to think through digital selfhood and the project of self-commodification, post-postmodern love and dating, the albums I can’t put down, and the works of art I carry with me when I look out at the world. I think. It might also be an entirely solipsistic endeavor. Or a performance.” —Kennedy on August 4, 2023