Justin Reed is a writer and educator who was born and raised in Watertown, New York. He now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife, Joan, who is an elementary school teacher, his daughter, Vera, and son, Daniel. He is currently revising his first novel, The Hidden Heart.

Justin has lived across the U.S.—from New York State to Florida, Boston to the Midwest—as well as in England and Spain. He earned his B.A. from Cornell University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University, and an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati.

His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Epoch, Consequence, Post Road, Flash, and other journals. His fiction received a special mention in the 2019 Pushcart Prize and has won the Hatfield/Westheimer Short Story Prize, with runner-up placements for the Lex Allen Prize and the George Harmon Coxe Award. He is a recipient of a Literature Artist Fellowship grant through the Somerville Arts Council, and his work has been supported by the University of Cincinnati’s Research Council and Taft Research Center, where he is a 2025–2026 Taft Dissertation Fellow.

Justin has served as assistant fiction editor for Consequence Magazine, senior reader for Harvard Review, and lecturer at Tufts University.