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The first time I contacted Gabrielle Korn was in July of 2018 via an Instagram DM story reply that pleaded: “bring it back to print plz,” followed up with “even if it’s only like twice a year.” I was a heartbroken twenty-four year old coming to terms with the news that Nylon would transition to solely digital. I had grown accustomed to a decade of receiving glossy issues of the magazine to my mom’s mailbox and thought this decision could most definitely be reversed. As Patti Smith said: the people have the power...right?

Gabrielle Korn was promoted to editor-in-chief of Nylon at 28, the same day the magazine announced its digital transition. At that time, she was one of the youngest and the only out lesbian at the top of a major masthead. After two years leading the magazine, Gabrielle left the Nylon universe, published three novels and an essay collection, and moved from New York to Los Angeles.

Long Island Girls (out June 23rd, 2026 with St. Martin’s Press) –Gabrielle’s third novel to date–is a queer coming-of-age story centered around our main character, an indie record label assistant named Susan, and her unattainable longtime crush, Eliza.

As someone who grew up sweating at pop-punk shows in West Michigan and loitering in musty DIY basements, I found a universality in the yearning and indie tones that Gabrielle captures in this book. Chances are, if you subscribed to Alternative Press magazine as a teenager or wished Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was gayer, you should pick Long Island Girls up.

I sat down with Gabrielle over a video call to discuss her experience being a lesbian at the top of a masthead, Long Island Girl’s early aughts nostalgia, and the perceived future of queer media.

(...Oh, and Gabrielle did kindly respond to my pleading DMs way back in 2018. In case you were wondering.)

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Long Island Girls begins in the year 2005 with a bedroom scene. There’s an issue of SPIN Magazine, a Death Cab for Cutie poster on the wall...Where were you online in the year 2005?

I was chatting on AIM, reading blogs, and downloading music. I was pretty well behaved, honestly. I wasn't going into chat rooms. I had a pretty healthy fear, but I was definitely, like, IMing my friends all night.

I was that “a/s/l” girl in the chatroom that was like: “I'm 16f from FL”, as I'm twelve and living in Michigan. Do you remember your screen names from that era?

Oh my God, do I ever. I think my best one was “ThoseRainyNights."

Is that from something?

Yeah, it was from a Saves the Day song. I think my font was as tiny as it could possibly be and a really pale purple. So it was, like, impossible to read. Oh my God. I thought that was really cool.

Long Island Girls is full of indie sleaze nostalgia. Were you involved in any sort of DIY scenes on Long Island when you were a teenager?

I was going to shows constantly. I wasn't necessarily participating beyond showing up, but we did have a lot of great venues. The Downtown always had big bands, even though it was like a tiny shithole.

[When writing Long Island Girls] I was thinking about all the many lives we live and how important it is to let yourself keep changing. I imagined someone who doesn't do that and who stays the person she is at seventeen. Since I was such a music lover, that's where my mind went. Like, what if someone remains indie, and what else does she hold on to?

When I was in college, I had an internship at a record label, which was my peek into the music industry. And I was covering it while I was at Nylon, so I feel like I've had all of these different looks at it that informed the book, too.

At that time, were you interested in being a music writer?

Yeah. I think that was the original dream. I wanted to be a music journalist, and then when I came out, honestly, I didn't care as much anymore. Something really shifted for me. I had been so obsessed with music, and then my interests shifted, and I wanted to learn more about what it meant to be queer.

You were an indie emo kid on Long Island, right? What were the artists or the bands as you were growing up that were the pivotal emo bands?

I feel like I was never fully emo. I loved Saves the Day. I liked Taking Back Sunday and the Brand New situation, but I was more [into] Bright Eyes. And much like the main character of Long Island Girls, I think I also did have a “forty-five-year-old dad” taste in music. Like, I loved the National. Their two best albums came out while I was in high school.

My friends and I saw Yo La Tengo play over and over and over again. That was kind of the scene. There were overlaps in the music and the aesthetic. And, you know, I hate to say you had to be there, but like, the niches had niches.

When you started to write Long Island Girls, did you start chipping away at it chronologically, or were you inspired to start at a certain time?

That's such a good question. I wrote the first chapter thinking I was writing a short story, and by the time I finished it, I was like, Oh God, it's a novel. I heard the conversations before I really imagined anything else. I would write like very bare-bones dialogue scenes just to get it all out, and then go back and put the details.

Did the first chapter change much from when you had drafted it as a short story versus how it exists in the book?

Not really. I think I went in and made it, and I tried to make it funnier and a little bit hornier. In terms of what happens, it stays the same.

Queer longing is central to the book. Did you pull inspo from any early aughts songs or movies for this, or was it mostly from personal experience?

There is a Long Island Girls playlist. It’s public on Spotify, but there were a lot of songs that I was listening to while I was writing it. And, you know, the longing plot did not originate in the songs, but the songs definitely helped set the mood. I definitely listened to “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by Stars on repeat in between writing the love scenes. It wasn't really inspired by personal experience. I mean, I've done a lot of the messy things that Susan does with different people, but the idea of it all being directed at one person is original to the book.

Tinder is referenced in both your memoir and in your new book. I’m wondering how you went about choosing a quote from The Bell Jar for [character Eliza’s] Tinder profile? If you remember, what did your Tinder profile say way back when?

I wanted Eliza to be a little bit of a cliche; she's really mysterious to Susan, but when you peel back the layers, you find that she's pretty normal. And I was thinking about what's a cool girl/kind of basic literary choice for a Tinder bio. And then that's what occurred to me. There's a layer of it where, if you don't know the reference, it does seem shrouded in mystery. But if you do, it's like, okay, so she read The Bell Jar…tell me what else.

I don't think I remember my Tinder bio. I think it's probably because I was constantly changing it. I really couldn't commit to something, but it was definitely something very short and obnoxious. I had a hard time being earnest on dating apps. It was probably like: I'm a Taurus, but astrology is fake.

You and the main character, Susan, have a lot in common. Is there anything that you staunchly believe are your differences?

Yeah, totally. I think that I was very similar to Susan in the first chapter, and then she becomes her own person. She puts up with things that I would never put up with. The most important thing to her for a really long time is being cool. I thinkI stopped caring about that pretty quickly in life. She cares what men think, and I definitely don't. Ultimately, I think she is also pretty masc and is on a journey to embrace that. She's not me. Her gender is not mine. She's definitely her own person, but I did give her my geographic details. And so, you know, that does shape things.

Did you know that Susan was going to be more masc than you are when you began writing her character?

Yeah, yeah. Before you figure out what your gender is, things are very awkward in your own skin. I pictured someone trying so hard to be femme on Long Island, and it being really obvious to everybody who can smell queerness, what was happening, you know, and not obvious to her. And that was not my experience.

I’m curious how you think the landscape is different for queer media today versus when you started out?

I think it has had a lot of ebbs and flows. I mean, I feel really concerned right now for the media because I think AI and what Google's doing is going to really screw people. But, there's always been something coming that we're told is going to change the media landscape forever. When I was working in media at first, it was like, " Digital is killing print." And then it was like "social media is killing digital," and now it's "AI is killing social media."

I do think we always find ways to adapt. I think this moment is hard because it's hard to know what it's going to turn into, but if you zoom out, this happens every five years. People still figure out how to read and write. I think queer media has its challenges. I think there was a moment in time where people were a lot more interested in queer content. I think [the 2016-2018 era] of queer people in the spotlight was really fun to participate in. Advertisers cared; there was money going around. I think it went away for a while.

Every now and then, something breaks through that makes people interested in it again. I think Heated Rivalry opened a lot of doors back up for queer media. I think it's always ebbing and flowing. And the most important thing is that we make our own media so that we're not forever tethered to these corporations who only care about us when we're profitable.

In your memoir (Everyone (Else) is Perfect, 2021), you mentioned being the youngest Nylon editor at that point and the only out lesbian at the top of a masthead. What was that like for you? Were there unique challenges that you faced that a straight editor might not have at that time?

Yeah. It was kind of isolating, but I think in hindsight that my age isolated me more than my queerness. I think that probably there were many more queer people than I was aware of. I just think I was so young. My peers had had these storied careers, and they all knew each other from the many jobs that they had had. And I was just kind of dropped into it.

Do you think that if you hadn't gotten that position, you would still be doing something similar? Maybe editing in a capacity for a different magazine?

Yeah, maybe, because I think when you get to the top too quickly, there's nowhere else to go. So when I left Nylon, it's not like there were other, like, editor-in-chief jobs open. So, I took a fashion director job that I had for about a year, and then I left media completely because I just felt like there was nothing for me. And I think if there had been more of a ladder for me to climb, it would have been different.

The cover of Long Island Girls is so good. When I finished the book and read the acknowledgments, it said that you helped direct the photo shoot for the cover. Do you mind telling me about that process?

Lindsey Byrnes is one of my closest friends. She's an amazing photographer, and she and I started working together when I was at Nylon, and she shot a lot of the [magazine] covers with me, so we're very used to working together. I was pulling inspiration to send to the publisher for the cover of Long Island Girls, and she said to me, “Can you please just let me do it?” And I was like, "Let you do it? Like, it would be my honor for you to do it! "So, she and I cast some friends, and I spent a week at the mall.

We shot it in my bedroom, and I can't believe how beautiful it turned out. I was really trying to plan exactly what it would look like, and Lindsay was finally like, “I know that you want to plan, but I promise you the best shot will be something we don't plan for. So just let it go, and we'll figure it out on the day of.” And so, I did that. There were a lot of other shots, I ordered wigs, you know, but that was the one that felt like the best fit.

At one point in your career, you were a beauty editor for Refinery29, and through your writing, you seem to be someone who clearly appreciates a fragrance. You mention the cult classic, now cliché, Le Labo’s Santal 33 in Long Island Girls, and in your memoir, you mention your partner Wallace's mix of designer fragrances. Do you have favorite fragrances?

The one I'm wearing right now in my life is Lola at Coat Check by a brand called Discothéque. And I swear to God, I cannot wear this out of the house without being stopped by two to three people everywhere I go. It smells so good, and I almost want to gatekeep it, but I don't do that.

What does it smell like?

It's sweet and also woody. It smells like a night out.

I have a winter fragrance that I've been wearing for over ten years, which is this brand called Odin, and the scent is 11 Semma, and it's really wintry. In fact, it's a little hard to wear in LA because it never fully gets cold enough for it to feel appropriate. It smells like a sexy campfire, and there's nothing like it. Wallace has a million different perfumes, and that's her vibe. And my vibe is having, like, two.

You mentioned in your book, too, that you were in a punk band as a [high schooler]. Do you remember the name of the band?

Our band was called Nobody's Comet.

Nobody's Comment? Is that like a reference to MySpace? Or where does that come from?

No, I think, I think there was like a Comet at the time.

Ooooh COMET, like a Halley's Comet.

But the problem with that name was that everybody always thought we were saying “Nobody's Coming.”

Oh, okay. Yeah, two things can be true at the same time. Yeah. How long did it last for?

About a year, I'd say. But I had really bad stage fright, so our live shows really sucked.

I have bad stage fright, too. Were you on guitar?

Yeah.

Not singing? 

Absolutely not. I can't hit a note. I think I was probably the most enthusiastic about it. And it's hard to make people care when they don't care that much. Yeah. And, ultimately, it was just really embarrassing. And I'm glad we stopped when we did and that there's no record of it.

There's no, there's no home videos? There are no tapes?

No, there are a couple of photos. I had an eight-track recorder, and we could not figure out how to use it.

In relation to stage fright, in your memoir, you mentioned that you err towards being shy in group settings. How were you able to garner the confidence to be such a highly-needed, very “on” editor? Did you have to grow in certain ways to do this?

Yeah, but I also think that there's a lot of power in being quiet. I think that when you're in a leadership position, people mostly just want you to listen to them. So, I didn't really change myself that much. I think a lot of shyness is social anxiety. For me, that’s something I've kind of grown out of, but so much of what I wrote about in the book had to do with how young I was. You know, like, the things that felt scary kind of no longer feel scary, and the fun of things that didn't feel scary, in hindsight, I'm like, girl, what were you doing?

That’s bravery! I get social anxiety. Having the confidence to feel a sense of belonging in a space is something I really admire because I'm sure sometimes it probably did feel terrifying, right? Or maybe it's something you gain muscle as you're doing it?

Yeah, I mean, I'm also not convinced that I was the right person to be doing that job. And that's okay. I think I was there at the right time, and I was capable and willing, and I was relatively cheap labor, you know? Like, [they] didn't have to bring in a really experienced person who would have demanded more.

I think if I had worked under somebody instead of taking that job, I don't know what would have happened for my professional development, but maybe it would have been great, you know? And I'm at peace with this. It's not like I'm beating myself up about it and think I didn't deserve it. I think that, like, there was a very specific set of circumstances that led me to taking that job. And only part of it had to do with what I brought to the role.

In your Everyone (Else) is Perfect, you have the realization that you could study women at NYU and queer theory, which led to an internship at the Lesbian HerStory Archives (in Park Slope, Brooklyn). Were there any artifacts that were formative to your becoming, either through your own archival work or simply through feeling seen?

That's a really good question. I mean, something really special about the Lesbian HerStory Archives is the way there's no real hierarchy to what's considered worth archiving, and so there is stuff from famous lesbians, but also random stuff that people have donated. [There are] love letters of someone random next to the completed works of someone very well-known. I think it was really helpful for me in taking my own writing seriously and my own experience seriously. The attitude is that it's all worth saving. But mostly it was the community that I became a part of that was formative. A lot of the people that I met are still in my life; I met my best friend through that internship.

I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a big move in Long Island Girls. I also know that you've moved from New York to LA. How has that been? Has it changed your writing practice at all?

Yeah, completely. I don't know if I could have become a novelist in New York. Life was so chaotic and hard, and it was like go, go, go all the time. In LA, I've had space to breathe and think and imagine in a way I just don't think I ever would have in New York. I think creatively it has really changed everything for me. It's just so much easier. And it's like in that ease, I think there is a lot of freedom to imagine.

I don't know if good art comes when you're in survival mode. And I think I was in survival mode. Here I see nature, like there are different rooms in my house that I can be in, you know, it really does make a difference for me and my process.

What’s next for you?

I'm writing my next book. I’m seeing if there is interest in Long Island Girls for the screen. And you know, mostly just trying to see how long I can go without getting another full-time job.

Cover image by Lindsey Byrnes