Children almost always have fantasies about who they want to be when they grow up— they idolize astronauts, movie stars, and athletes. Growing up, Kyleigh Leddy was no exception. From a young age, Leddy knew she wanted to be a writer, and an exceptional one at that.
“I remember I told my mom that I wanted to write books, turn those books into movies, and then help other authors turn their books into movies too,” Leddy, BC ’19, said. “It’s always been my dream since I was like seven.”
Eighteen years later, Leddy made her childhood dreams come true. Her novel, The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister, was published in March of 2022, and she was recently named to the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 media list for her work as a writer. She is also writing a screenplay for her novel, which will soon become a film.
After her older sister’s mental health deteriorated and she eventually disappeared, Leddy said she hoped to combat harmful stigmas surrounding mental health through her writing. With this goal in mind, she decided to study English and psychology at Boston College. But, she said the thought of pursuing writing professionally was daunting.
“I was really discouraged by what people tell you—how hard it is to make it,” Leddy said. “I was really pursuing psychology more so. I did a thesis in the cooperation lab at BC, and I was thinking I’d maybe get my Ph.D., write a psychology-type book.”
While Leddy was taking a creative nonfiction class, professor Suzanne Berne said she sensed her potential. In this course, Leddy wrote about her emotional journey as she learned to cope with her sister’s disappearance. Not only was Leddy’s story emotional, but Berne also said she wrote extraordinarily.
“She wrote at the beginning of the semester: ‘The cruel promise of possibility is harsher than any certainty could be,’ [and] I thought, ‘My God, this is someone who is so wise and who is thinking on such a sophisticated level about something that is so hard to contemplate,’” Berne said.
Throughout the class, Berne watched Leddy’s writing process evolve. She said the other students were fascinated by Leddy’s storytelling and wanted to understand more of her story.
“A number of Kyleigh’s early exercises were focused on descriptions of her sister and her family after her sister’s disappearance,” Berne said. “I started to realize I was seeing fragments of a very large and significant story.”
For years, Professor Berne has advised her students to take advantage of the New York Times’ Modern Love College Essay Competition, where students can submit essays about the current state of love and relationships. Few of Berne’s students actually enter the competition, but Berne said Leddy jumped at the opportunity to submit her work.
As Leddy contemplated her submission and future prospects as a writer, she made a deal with herself. Though Leddy said her chances of winning were slim, she decided to let the contest decide if she would continue writing her and her sister’s story.
“I had said aloud to my sister—which I don’t usually do—‘If you don’t want me writing about your life, have this essay get sucked into the void of the submission pile and I’ll stop writing about you,’” Leddy said. “And then I found out that I had won the contest pretty close to her birthday. I was like, ‘Okay, like this feels like a sign.’”
As her story drew public attention, Leddy’s writing moved readers. Her story is unique, but the underlying themes of grief and love are ones many readers can relate to.
“I was inundated with messages from people around the world thanking me for being so honest and vulnerable, and how much it helped them to see somebody else express their grief and their experience,” Leddy said.
This positive feedback motivated Leddy to continue writing about her sister, detailing her full story into a new book.
“In the modern love contest essay, I was kind of holding back so much,” Leddy said. “I didn’t feel like I was being vulnerable. I felt like I was hiding the major part of the story, which is mental illness, mental health. Hearing people tell me how I’d help them, I thought, ‘I could do more, I could help more people if I was just more honest.’”
Writing about love and loss can be exhausting for any writer, whether or not the author personally relates. So as she continued documenting her sister’s story, Leddy began to reprocess an array of once-retired emotions.
“I feel like it, in some ways, was setting me back where I [once] was,” Leddy said.“It was like I was back in that headspace I was when I was seventeen. People would say to me, ‘It must be so therapeutic for you to write this book,’ and I would get so angry.”
As she dove further into writing her new book, Leddy said she began to recognize the closure that came with opening up about her experiences.
“Looking back, it was so helpful to be able to physically close the book and say my truth and honor my sister and her life and her legacy,” Leddy said. “And then also be able to walk away from it in a sense and say ‘I’m kind of done with this chapter in my life, and I’m ready to move on.’ So in the end it was really healing.”
Through writing her novel, Leddy said she forged a deeper spiritual connection with her sister.
“There were so many weird moments of synchronicity, where things felt aligned and when I really felt my sister’s presence with me. I don’t think I could have written this book if I didn’t feel like she was in some way with me or wanted me to do it,” Leddy said.
Katherine Tague, Leddy’s roommate and friend since her freshman year at BC, said she witnessed how Leddy’s writing process developed throughout her time at college.
“I watched this amazing flourish happen when she started writing about it,” Tague, BC ’19, said. “You know, even though it’s her life and her story, I think she spends a lot of time asking the big questions, right? ‘How will this affect others around me,’ those kinds of things”
Since Leddy had never been trained through an MFA program, she took it upon herself to develop her writing skills as she wrote her novel. She pulled inspiration from a plethora of memoirs and nonfiction writing, especially those of Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, and Dani Shapiro. Reading these works helped Leddy decide what writing structures, styles, and techniques she preferred.
“It’s hard to believe in yourself and to believe in your own ability to produce creative work,” Leddy said. “It’s a hard battle sometimes, but if you love it, it’s also fun. I think I’m the first person to try to encourage young writers.”
Despite her lack of professional experience, Leddy said she knew her passion and skill set could carry her to great heights. Five months after publishing The Perfect Other, Kyleigh Leddy found out she was being considered for the Forbes 30 Under 30 media list.
“I heard nothing for months—The email saying that I had made the list had gone to my spam folder,” Leddy said. “I was like ‘What is this! Is this really happening?’”
Throughout her journey as a writer, from when she won the New York Times’ contest to when she made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Media List, Tague said Leddy has always maintained a sense of humility and honesty.
“You can feel the honesty and the levity and the hope in the writing,” Tague said. “She doesn’t want to be a spectacle. She doesn’t want to dramatize. She just wants to be honest about what it’s been like to have this experience.”
Through her transparent storytelling, Leddy has not only helped her readers who are experiencing grief, but she has also helped herself heal and connect with her sister.
“My sister and I are in a really good place,” Leddy said. “It doesn’t sound totally sane saying out loud, but it does feel that way sometimes. In my heart, we did this together. I wouldn’t have been able to beat the odds of publishing a book if I didn’t have her permission.”
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