Wyn Reed

Raised in Ashland, Oregon, Reed was the daughter of New York Times bestselling author Kelly Moore and English teacher Daniel Reed. Her early life was marked by artistic pursuits: she performed in school and community theater, wrote award-winning essays, sang and wrote music for a band, and served as editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper. After high school, she studied broadcast journalism, theater, and cinema at the University of Southern California, where she also wrote for the Daily Trojan.

Reed’s literary career began in her teens, when she persuaded her mother and younger sister, Larkin, to collaborate on Amber House. The novel was widely praised, named to the 2014 Texas Library Association’s TAYSHAS reading list, and became a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Young Adult Literature. Reed also narrated the audiobook editions of the series.

Reed’s career took a dramatic turn in 2016, when she was arrested in connection with the shooting death of her uncle, Shane Moore, in Applegate, Oregon. Though she initially claimed self-defense, video evidence contradicted her account. In May 2020, she pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six years and three months in prison. Her case drew national attention, and was the subject of the NBC Dateline podcast Killer Role (2020) and an episode of Snapped.

While incarcerated, Reed’s work as Wyn Reed in From the Dark (2020) was released, blurring the lines between her real life and the fictional role she portrayed. She served her sentence at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Oregon and, according to NBC reporting, was released in November 2024.