And to be constantly like, “OK, this guy is trying to ruin my life, but it’s fine. I wanted to have that be, in a way, very joyful and also with a particular focus on how hard it is to be liked. MG: I’ve always been a feminine person, so it was important to have that in the language of the novel and in the characters, to reflect that. I hate to use the word “empowering” because it can feel a bit meaningless, but let me ask, what feels empowering to you about writing something that is deliberately interested in being frothy? SK: I think this is just a lot of what it is to be a young woman in general, to have your interests be treated as frivolous and stupid. I wanted it to be like if you had met girls like Isa and Gala, especially at our age now, you would 100 percent be annoyed by them. When people are making fun of girls that they think are super frivolous or vapid, I’m like, “these are the girls that I’m supposed to keep protected, in a way.” And that’s kind of what I wanted in the novel. It’s just so funny to me that we have been like this forever. When I’m writing, I think a lot about how we have this kind of nastiness toward young women who we think are vain. People don’t take young women seriously, which is the whole point of the book. MG: Well, the thing is that people were asking me, “Oh are you worried about it not being accepted within this very literary institution?” I think that there was a high probability that it wasn’t going to take off in those circles because of the subject matter. SK: I saw that you posted on Twitter about sending your book to girls on TikTok. I feel like an older sister to these characters, and now I’m giving the novel to some of these young influencers who I’m seeing all the time. That kind of writing can feel a little imprecise in how you process experiences at that age. I feel like people try to do it backwards and write about youth when they’re older, and it feels overwrought. Now I look at it and I am very happy to have felt and written it so close to those ages. The book kind of encapsulated this period of time from when I was 15 to roughly 22, and the dynamics that I had experienced over that time. I was such a city dweller, and I started going out very young. Isa and Gala are very much a testament to how I was. MG: I started writing Happy Hour when I was 22, so very soon after the age of these characters. SK: Who did you write this for? What is your relationship with these characters? They act like they are selling something, but it’s not really clear what it is. Lola Kirke is like, “Well what are you selling?” And Greta Gerwig says, “Everything!” I felt like that was so similar to how these girls act. After I wrote the novel, I remember watching Mistress America, and one of the lines is so funny.

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