In this episode, we interview authors Rachel Lynn Solomon and Gabrielle Korn. First up, Rachel chats with us about her adult debut The Ex Talk, a romantic comedy set at a Seattle public radio station. In it, Shay and Dominic fake a past relationship in order to host a podcast together. Then, Gabrielle talks about her memoir Everybody Else Is Perfect, which discusses her time as the Editor In Chief at NYLON and touches on imposter syndrome, queer representation in media, and more.
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A transcript of this episode is available at the end of our show notes.
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Credits
The Desk Set is brought to you by the King County Library System. The show is hosted by librarians Britta Barrett and Emily Calkins, and produced by Britta Barrett. Our theme song is "I Know What I Want" by Math and Physics Club. Other music provided by Chad Crouch, from the Free Music Archive.
Transcript
Emily Calkins:
You're listening to The Desk Set.
Britta Barrett:
A bookish podcast for reading broadly.
Emily Calkins:
We're your hosts, Emily Calkins.
Britta Barrett:
And Britta Barrett.
Emily Calkins:
And on this episode, we're talking about books that make you laugh.
Britta Barrett:
And books about pop culture.
Emily Calkins:
First up, I'll interview author Rachel Lynn Solomon. She has a new romantic comedy called The Ex Talk that's set at a public radio station here in Seattle.
Britta Barrett:
Then I interviewed Gabrielle Korn, the author of a new memoir called Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes. Gabrielle is a former editor-in-chief at Nylon Magazine. We talked a lot about her time in women's media, but our conversation, like her memoir, covers some heavy topics, including eating disorders and experiences of assault. So keep that in mind as you're choosing when and where to listen.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
My name is Rachel Lynn Solomon and my new book is The Ex Talk. It is a romantic comedy set in the world of public radio, and it's about Shay and Dominic are coworkers forced to pose as exes to host a new show about dating and relationships.
Emily Calkins:
So Shay and Dominic both love their jobs. And part of their sort of initial enmity comes from the fact that they're really passionate about their work at this radio station and that they're kind of competitive with each other. So the book has kind of a workplace comedy vibe in addition to being a romance. What made you want to set the story at a public radio station?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yeah, so I have a background in public radio. I worked there in college and in my early twenties and it is just a very quirky world. And I think a lot of people, especially NPR listeners and donors, might find it fascinating to peel back the curtain a bit. And I like to say that this book has been marinating in my brain for the past 10 years, even though I didn't start writing it until a couple of years ago, just because back when I worked in public radio, and I was writing fiction on the side, I always felt like I might explore it someday.
Emily Calkins:
Yeah. I will say as both an NPR listener and someone who works on a podcast, I found it really interesting. Both those angles are really fun in the book. And I think it's clear that you have that background because the detail is so natural and it's incorporated into the story in so many different ways. So that part of it was really fun for me to read. And I don't want to give too much away about the story, but there is kind of a villain in the book who also is ends up being one of Shay and Dominic's coworkers. And it's someone who doesn't take Shay very seriously because she's a woman. And the thing that I thought was really interesting about this plot element is that it takes Shay a really long time to sort of realize that this is happening because it's very subtle. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about your inspiration for that part of the story.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Definitely. And I appreciate you mentioning that, and that subtlety was absolutely intentional because I think... Well, it was two fold. So I think a lot of times there are misogynists who believe that they are a hundred percent doing something great for women simply by employing them or even for people of color as well. I hired one person of color, and I have solved diversity, right? People who just don't fully grasp the issue. And I felt like it would be more powerful also for Shay to gradually realize that she has been working with someone who does not a hundred percent respect her.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
And I also think there are just all these microaggressions that women experience on a daily basis that build up over time. And it takes a while to realize that that's what they are, that these subtle jabs are actually a little more insidious. One of the examples in the book is Shay is in a meeting with a bunch of other staff members and she is the one who is asked to take notes, or her boss says, "You like stories that are softer." And that's also just kind of a subtle dig. I really felt like a heavy handed approach to workplace misogyny would just be cartoonish and not entirely believable. And I think there's a lot of power in subtlety.
Emily Calkins:
Yeah. I love the sort of the moment where she kind of realizes what's going on. Having been in similar experiences myself, where you just think, I can't - this person seems like a reasonable person and I can't believe that this is happening. And she even has to kind of look to Dominic and be like, is this really? I just said what you said. I think most women have been in a meeting or in an interaction where they float an idea and it kind of gets ignored. And then that same idea is floated by a man, and it's like, yeah, that's what we're going to do. Anyway, I just thought that part was really interesting. I love a romantic comedy that also has sort of just feels really contemporary and real.
Emily Calkins:
So Shay is Jewish and there's a wonderful scene in the book where she celebrates Passover with her mom and her mom's boyfriend and his family. And while I was reading it, I realized that although these sort of big family scenes are pretty common in contemporary romance. I think it was maybe the first time that I had ever seen a Jewish family celebration depicted. So can you talk a little bit about Jewish representation in The Ex Talk?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Absolutely. So that is one of my favorite topics for sure. So I started out writing YA, which I still do. My first three books were YA, and this was my first adult romance novel. And when I was writing YA, I have four unpublished books before my debut novel, and my debut was the first book that I wrote with Jewish characters. And I really think it's not a coincidence that that is also my first published book because there just wasn't the same kind of authenticity in those earlier books that didn't get published. And growing up, I just did not see Jewish characters in the media unless it was about the Holocaust.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
And for the longest time that just hammered into me this thought that that is the only story that we have to tell, and tragedy is our only narrative. So I just didn't write Jewish characters, and it wasn't until the first flash of an idea I had for that, for my first published book was something that revolves around Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And once that book came out and I started hearing from Jewish readers, I really just kind of made a vow to myself that I would only write Jewish main characters. And in this book, yeah, I mean, that is no different. I wouldn't say that this book is deeply religious by any means, or that it has even strong Jewish themes, but being Jewish is very important to Shay, and that is a hundred percent something that makes her who she is.
Emily Calkins:
So you just mentioned that The Ex Talk is your first adult novel, but you have written young adult novels before, and I'm wondering what was different writing for and about adults.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yeah. So the thing that I was most surprised by was the amount of independence that my characters had. I could have my main character sit on her couch and drink a bottle of wine, and that would be totally fine. Whereas if you do that in a YA novel, that is deeply concerning. I can also have her get in the car and drive and not need to tell her mom where she's going. But mainly what I found is YA really deals with these questions of identity and who am I? And while that may factor into an adult novel a little bit, most of them, at least the kinds of books that I read and books that I like to write are focusing on, who am I, and what am I contributing? What is my place in the world? And I think that is really what Shay is dealing with in this book, especially with her relationship with public radio and kind of what she wants out of life, both personally and professionally. So it's fun to bounce back between the two and those different kinds of stakes.
Emily Calkins:
The relationship with her mom is really interesting because a lot of times in adult books, that parental relationship is either deeply troubled or it's just sort of ignored, but she has this really great relationship with her mom that's still complicated. So it's very different from what would be in a YA novel because she is, like you said, she's independent, she owns her own house, and yet her mom is still in her life, and I really liked that part of it. So we've talked about a lot of things that aren't the romance, but I want to talk about the romance part in this book too, because it was so fun. And I think my favorite part of it is there are all these scenes where they're recording this radio show together and they're faking this relationship that's over, but they have all this really great flirty dialogue, and I am just a sucker for really good dialogue. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you put those scenes together.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yeah. So those were actually the hardest part of the book, especially the podcast transcripts that are peppered throughout. And I left those till the end of my first draft, and then they were very thin in the initial version that I showed my agent. And she was like, okay, if this podcast is getting popular, we need to actually see why people like it. And I was like, I know, but it's hard. Dialogue has always been a struggle for me because it is so tough to capture something just snappy and fun. And people in books don't talk the way we do in real life. So my first two YA novels are a bit darker and heavier, and when I started writing my third book Today Tonight Tomorrow, which came out last year, I really wanted to challenge myself with the dialogue.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
It's a romantic comedy that takes place over 24 hours, and so much of it is just the two main characters wandering Seattle. And I knew that the dialogue would really have to be top-notch. So I spent a lot of time watching movies and shows where I really admired the dialogue, and just knowing that anything in my first draft would eventually get edited and fine tuned to the point where, okay, it has a good rhythm to it and it feels banter-y and fun. And then I think that probably evolved a bit in The Ex Talk, and then hopefully it's something that will continue to improve because I'm definitely not a master of it yet.
Emily Calkins:
So you just mentioned Today Tonight Tomorrow follows the characters as they're wandering around Seattle and The Ex Talk is also set in Seattle. And then there's a little aside where they go to Orcas and I love reading stories set in the Pacific Northwest because it's so fun to read about places that you know. So tell us a little bit about the setting for this book and what it's like to write where you live.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yes. So I love setting books in Seattle because I think that anyone who doesn't live here gets it completely wrong. I mean, I think one of the famous examples is just Fifty Shades of Grey and how the main character has an apartment in Pike Place, which is so odd. But I really like to show kind of the version of Seattle that I love and all of the diverse parts of it that make it so great. So it maybe does rain on occasion in my books, but I think more so it's gloomy because we are very known for gloominess. But I also just think there is this great intellectual energy in Seattle that works well for a book set at a public radio station. And I find myself even falling in love with Seattle all over again when I'm writing about it.
Emily Calkins:
So The Ex Talk features a couple of romantic comedy, old-school standby tropes. Dominic and Shay start out as kind of enemies, so it's like an enemies to lovers story. And then there's this sort of fun, forced proximity element. Can you talk about writing tropes and what makes it fun and what's challenging about it?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yeah. So with this one, I like to think of the fake exes as a mashup of enemies to lovers and fake dating, two tropes that I love. And then there is a whole ton of forced proximity thrown in there. And when I'm writing romance, I am really writing things that bring me joy as a reader and I love forced proximity. Anytime I can force two people together, I will do it. Especially if it only involves one bed, which it does in this case.
Emily Calkins:
I was just so delighted by that scene because I love a fake relationship. And I just laughed when it was like, oh, there's only one bed. I was like, yes, only one bed.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
That scene in particular is one of my favorites to write, and it takes place when Shay and Dominic are actually called out on the air by a listener, and their manager tells them to go away for the weekend at an Airbnb and when they come back, he wants them to know everything they possibly can about each other. And this is just when their feelings are reaching their peak. So it was just tremendously enjoyable to write. And I just love, I think there's such a comfort in tropes. I mean, like you just said, you were cheering when you saw only one bed and I definitely do the same thing when I'm reading. So I want to, when I'm writing, I want to tap into those tropes that I love and try to infuse them with some new flare or new life as much as I can.
Emily Calkins:
Yeah. I think that was sort of the fun thing about the fake exes. I was telling a friend about this book and I was saying, oh, fake dating fake relationship is one of my favorite things, but this fake exes is a new spin on it. So it was very fun to read. So you actually grew up in the Seattle area, but not in the city of Seattle. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yeah. I grew up in Redmond. I love the Seattle area and the King County Library System was actually my childhood library system.
Emily Calkins:
That's awesome. We love to have writers who grew up in our libraries come back and be on the show or do events at our library, so it's very to hear that. So speaking of romantic comedy and other books that make you laugh and tropes you love, can you share some of your favorite romantic comedy reads?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yes. So recently I have really loved The Roommate by Rosie Danon, which came out last year. And that is about a woman who moves to LA and discovers that her new roommate is actually an adult performer. I also really love Helen Hoang's books, The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test. Honestly, almost anything with a brightly colored illustrated cover. If that's the cover, I'm reading it. I also love Talia Hibbert's books, Get a Life, Chloe Brown and Take a Hint, Dani Brown. Those are just brilliantly written, just so hilarious and just they have this great energy to them.
Emily Calkins:
Yeah. I love those also. And I think all of those books you talked about, I can sort of see the ties to them and The Ex Talk and sort of that the way that both they have this really fizzy, fun romance with great chemistry and also some of these more, I don't want to say serious exactly, but just realistic. The characters got to be real people with all of these elements in their lives that are not just the romance and all of that stuff also informs the relationship at the heart of the story. Those are some favorites of ours too. The other thing I wanted to ask about is just the amazing swag that you've been sharing for this book on your Twitter feed. It is just the greatest. There's a tote bag that's just so NPR. So can you talk a little bit about how all of that stuff comes together?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Yes. So I did not realize when I became an author that I would love promo so much, but I find it such a cool, creative thing to do. And I love that it's a way that I'm able to connect with readers. So I love putting together stickers, bookmarks, character art. And for this book, I thought even back when I was writing it, sometimes swag ideas will come to me when I'm writing. And I definitely don't write to the swag, but sometimes it just comes up. So for this one, I was like, pledge drive tote bags would be kind of amazing for this book. And I floated the idea to my publisher and they also loved it, and they designed these absolutely incredible bags. And I ordered probably too many of them, but I just loved them so much. So I'm giving away a bunch. So I'll be doing a few giveaways if people want to check out my Instagram.
Emily Calkins:
And then our last question that we always ask is what are you reading now?
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Currently I am reading a book that comes out in May. It's called Arsenic and Adobo by Mia Manansala, and it actually starts out with sort of a romcom premise, and then it becomes a murder mystery, it's a cozy. And the main character moves back to her hometown and she's working in her aunt's Filipino restaurant and one of their restaurant patrons just keels over in the middle of his meal. And she is kind of investigating what's going on there because she doesn't want any of her family members to be charged with his death. And it is just so much fun. I'm really new to the cozy mystery genre and this, I mean, really new as in this might be my first one, but I'm really loving it, and the voice is great. So I highly recommend that one out in May.
Emily Calkins:
Awesome. Thank you. So Rachel's new book The Ex Talk is out now and you can buy it wherever books are sold or borrow it from KCLS. Thanks so much for being with us today, Rachel.
Rachel Lynn Solomon:
Thank you so much, Emily.
Gabrielle Korn:
My name is Gabrielle Korn and I am the author of Everybody (Else) Is Perfect, which came out in January. I am an editor and a journalist and the former editor-in-chief of Nylon, and I currently work at Netflix
Britta Barrett:
And for anyone who's ever wanted to work in media or fashion, those are total dream credentials. Was it a dream job?
Gabrielle Korn:
There's no such thing as a dream job when it comes to editorial, but the way the businesses are structured because people want free content, no one is really set up for the kind of success that we see when other kinds of media illustrates what it's like to work in media.
Britta Barrett:
Part of why you were brought on as the editor-in-chief at Nylon is because you were bringing this progressive new vision and direction. What did you want to see change?
Gabrielle Korn:
I have been the digital director for Nylon for a couple of years before I was promoted to editor-in-chief. And what I saw online was that people were really responding the most to content that felt inherently political. So they were still interested in beauty, fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle. They were very aware of the fact that none of those things happen in a vacuum, that not just is there a political element to all of those things, but political repercussions and sociopolitical context for who gets to make those things and why. And so those conversations had started happening online, and we had started really participating in them as a brand in terms of the subject matter we discussed and the people we hired to write for us. And that kind of marked a divide between what the magazine did and what we were doing because the magazine stayed pretty traditional. So when the magazine folded and I became editor-in-chief, we could make those things a core part of the strategy.
Britta Barrett:
What else changed when you moved to a completely online publication?
Gabrielle Korn:
Not that much within what the scope of my job was because we had already started being so separate from what was coming out of the magazine, but externally in terms of being the face of the brand, my life changed completely. Once you have the words editor-in-chief in your title, you are suddenly expected to be at events, to be representing the company and the industry at large, to be on camera, to be photographed. It was a total whirlwind.
Britta Barrett:
So as the publication became more progressive, were those changes reflected in the workplace and the culture?
Gabrielle Korn:
Not as quickly as I would have liked. I was the EIC, so I wasn't the CEO. I didn't have final say over what we were paid. I didn't have final say over what our goals were. I did the best that I could to hire a diverse group of people and fight really hard to get them the money I thought that they deserved. But at the end of the day, digital media is still digital media and we were still expected to produce between 20 and 30 stories a day. And we were trying to triple traffic within a year. When I started out as an editorial assistant, I was making $15 an hour. Later when I got a salary job, my starting salary was 40. When I became a full editor, my salary was 55. When I became a senior editor, it was 68.
Gabrielle Korn:
Things that at the time felt like a lot of money, and in hindsight, feel really insulting when you think about the revenue that writers and editors drive through traffic versus the amount of money from that that they get to take home. Most people have other income streams. I knew a lot of people who were bartending. I think a lot of them are being supported by their parents. And I think that creates this environment where the people who stay in those jobs are the people who can afford to.
Britta Barrett:
What do you think a truly feminist work environment looks like?
Gabrielle Korn:
I don't think that it's possible to have any sort of ethical consumption under capitalism. So I think feminism is at odds with the way work in this country happens.
Britta Barrett:
Women's media seems like it's also kind of at odds with feminism in the sense that even at a time when messages were shifting more towards "let's be more inclusive and body positive," that you still sort of have to find a way to sell insecurities. Can you talk a little bit about the commercialization of empowerment?
Gabrielle Korn:
Totally. And that's largely what the thesis of my book is. We lived through a time when the branding of women's media looked diverse and inclusive and intersectional, and the reality was the issues that women were facing weren't getting any better. What brands realized was that they could make more money off of women by trying to help them feel better about themselves, not helping themselves feel worse, but either way, they're still kind of presenting a problem with the product as the solution, whether the problem is how you look or how you feel about it.
Britta Barrett:
Was it hard not to internalize some of those messages while you were working there?
Gabrielle Korn:
Yeah, but it's also hard not to internalize those messages as a person in the world. We all have the things that we bring with us into work. I thought that I was doing a really good job at seeing through the difference between the branding and what the real message was. But the truth was that my eating disorder really was at its worst around the time and the year leading up to my promotion to editor-in-chief. And it was when my career was starting to reach this peak frenzy for whatever reason and a million different reasons, I really thought that being skinny was part of being successful. And that's not an idea that comes from my brain. That is something that comes from the context of the world that I was in. And I would also add that when you have an eating disorder, before you're diagnosed, you don't think it's an eating disorder.
Gabrielle Korn:
You think that you're just doing the things that you're supposed to do. And that it's normal and even good. In so many different workplaces, I've noticed people becoming diet buddies and workout buddies, and it becomes this closed feedback loop of people encouraging each other to lose weight. And I'm not someone who wants to police that. I think there is a line between losing weight because you want to and losing weight because you think you have to, to be more acceptable to society. I don't think that all attempts to lose weight are inherently problematic, but I think it so easily crosses that line into disordered eating, into toxic body negativity. In my experience, there was no one really to point out when it got into that territory.
Britta Barrett:
In the parts where you were writing about eating disorders, you mentioned that you wanted to be careful about how you treated that topic.
Gabrielle Korn:
I didn't want to write anything that could be seen as a how to guide. And something that I realized, even in just talking to people about my eating disorder is how often people would be like, well, how did you do it? How did you lose the weight? They weren't asking because they cared about me. They were asking so that they could try it. And I just didn't want to participate in that. I just didn't want to give anybody leverage to harm themselves. So I didn't include descriptions of what I was and wasn't eating. It felt like it wouldn't serve the readers for me to do that.
Britta Barrett:
What did recovery look like?
Gabrielle Korn:
It looked like a nutritionist, a specialist, primary care physician, my therapist, and a psychiatrist. My health insurance covered very little of that, so I did that for a couple of months and then I couldn't afford it anymore. So for those couple of months, I had to take pictures of what I was eating and send it to my nutritionist, who I saw once a week, who then was in touch with the various other people on my team. She was weighing me once a week. It was kind of humiliating because I had to relearn how to eat. And I had to just accept the fact that this was something that needed to be taken out of my hands because I could no longer be trusted to feed myself responsibly. I stopped seeing all those people for two reasons.
Gabrielle Korn:
One, was I couldn't afford it. And two, was that part of the process was after my initial appointments with the doctor, I had to go get a bunch of tests done because my various blood levels were so low, so they ended up wanting me to get an EKG, to make sure I didn't have heart disease. And the person who gave me the EKG sexually assaulted me. At that point, I just felt like I cannot be in a position where I'm taking such poor care of myself that I am putting myself into the hands of strangers who I don't know and who I obviously can't trust. And that was really the turning point for me to feel like I needed to get it together so that I could take care of myself and so that I wouldn't be at risk again.
Britta Barrett:
In the book you mentioned that one of those tests revealed that your disordered eating behavior was probably impacting your brain function.
Gabrielle Korn:
Yeah. I was so depressed too, that I didn't really care about how I felt physically or what the long-term impacts on my health would be. One thing I've always felt confident in is my intellect and risking that was just not acceptable to me. It's interesting to look back on that because she also told me that it would take two years of eating regularly to heal from the damage that I had done to my brain. And sure enough, two years later I wrote a novel in six months. So it makes me sad to think about how much I could have accomplished had I been taking care of myself.
Britta Barrett:
As a person who's queer and Jewish, you're marginalized identities are kind of invisible to other people. What was that like at work?
Gabrielle Korn:
It was like I felt really tokenized as a lesbian, as often the only lesbian in the spaces I was in, but I felt like I didn't look any different from the people around me. So I felt like in a lot of ways, people were patting themselves on the back for diversity for having me in the mix, but I wasn't that different. But I was because I was queer and that's a different set of experiences. But I just think it's so complicated to be part of marginalized groups, but not be visible to other people.
Britta Barrett:
So when it comes to queer representation in media, what were some of your earliest experiences where you felt seen on screen?
Gabrielle Korn:
Unfortunately, I feel like it was the L Word, which was still on air around the time I came out. Before that the queer women I had been aware of were not people who were super aspirational for me. I had never seen women get to be queer on screen and be beautiful and have a group of friends who were also queer. I feel like if there was a character in something I was watching, they would be the lone person who would maybe get a love interest, but they certainly never got friends and they certainly were never dressed well.
Britta Barrett:
What queer characters that exist in TV and film now do you wish you had been able to see when you were younger?
Gabrielle Korn:
Any of them. But beyond that, beyond the fictional queer characters, I think what is so important about what's happening in pop culture now is the real life young queer women. I don't know what my life would have looked like if when I was in high school, we had Cara Delevingne and Kristen Stewart and Annie Clark and Ashley Benson, and that whole world of people. It would have been life changing to see that.
Britta Barrett:
How has your personal style evolved over time?
Gabrielle Korn:
Currently it involves being in my pajamas 24/7. I think that's been one of the only gifts of this period of time of working from home is that we can all just focus on our work and our creativity. But I've had a little bit of a gender journey with my personal style in that when I first came out when I was 19 and throughout the first part of my twenties, it was really important to me to be visibly queer, which to me at that time, meant presenting as more masculine than I felt. So I shaved my head, I was wearing boyfriend jeans and those Hanes tank tops. And I was really, really visible, but it didn't feel like me, and it wasn't sending the right message, and I wasn't attracting the people that I wanted to attract.
Gabrielle Korn:
As I got older and became more comfortable with myself and with, I guess, with my queerness and feeling like I didn't have to prove anything to anyone that was when I started to feel more comfortable being as feminine as I want to. And when I was editor-in-chief, I feel like my style involved me trying to convey power in a lot of ways. I feel like I was wearing ridiculous heels and oversized structured things to take up space and seem important. And as soon as I left that job, I was like, oh wow, I can look nice for work without having to think about what kind of messages I'm conveying to the people I'm managing. It's just so nice to, I don't know, to be myself and to not think about how other people will interpret me based on what they see me wearing.
Britta Barrett:
And how were your experiences moving through the world across that gender spectrum?
Gabrielle Korn:
I had more experiences with strangers saying homophobic things to me when they could tell I was gay, but the amount of street harassment didn't change, the words people were using just shifted. When I had short hair and looked like a more androgynous person than I am, people would call me a dyke in passing. And as a fem, people just call me a bitch. So damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Britta Barrett:
And your book shares some really honest heart-wrenching moments of harassment, assault, and abuse. What do you wish people who haven't experienced those things themselves knew?
Gabrielle Korn:
Most men have experienced things like this. Definitely not as regularly. I think the difference is it's not on the street. It's not the backdrop of their lives, it's kind of isolated incidents. And so what I wish they knew was what we deal with all the time and how it impacts the rest of our lives. On my commute to Refinery29, every single day, I was harassed from door to door. And I tried taking other routes, I tried not being dressed up, I tried being dressed up, I tried everything, and nothing helped. And I became terrified of my commute and that anxiety really affected every single aspect of my life. And I feel like they don't understand just the hold that that fear can have on you.
Britta Barrett:
And over the course of your writing career, you've shared some very personal stories. The first person personal essay, often sort of mined women's trauma for content. Did you ever feel pressure to disclose more than you were comfortable with?
Gabrielle Korn:
Of course. I mean, especially in early days, Refinery, once we realized that first person essays were doing the best traffic-wise, we were all told to just pitch personal essays, it became a requirement. And those of us who were willing to share the most were the ones who were rewarded with the most traffic. So there was a lot of pressure to do this public performance of vulnerability.
Britta Barrett:
Is there some relief just creating social media content as opposed to being the content?
Gabrielle Korn:
Yeah, totally. Which is what I'm doing for Netflix. And it's so soothing to not even have a byline on my work. I love being able to create and not having it be also about me.
Britta Barrett:
What are some of the books you're reading now or some favorite authors you'd love to shout out?
Gabrielle Korn:
I'm reading Outlawed by Anna North. And before that I read Melissa Broder's new book called Milk Fed, and I'm such a Melissa Broder fan. I think the way she writes about sex and food is just totally unhinged and amazing. Fiction was my first love. It's why I got into this mess in the first place. Over the summer when I was working at Refinery29, because of the economic circumstances around the pandemic, we all got salary cuts and were reduced to four days a week. So suddenly for the first time in a really long time, I had an extra day off every week and I really devoted it to writing. And what I ended up doing was a novel about climate change. It's kind of like a climate change horror story where the villain is this evil billionaire girl boss figure who kind of hijacks some climate change relief efforts. And it's about a group of queer women who are then affected by the thing that this woman does.
Britta Barrett:
That sounds amazing. Can't wait to read it.
Gabrielle Korn:
Thank you.
Britta Barrett:
Yeah. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for listening. You can find all the books mentioned in today's episodes in our show notes.
Emily Calkins:
The Desk Set is hosted by librarians, Britta Barrett, and Emily Calkins, produced by Britta Barrett, and brought to you by the King County Library System.
Britta Barrett:
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