Success, revenge, and Jessica Knoll

SUCCESS DOESN'T LOOK THE SAME FOR NOVELIST Jessica Knoll as it did five years ago.

- ELIANA DOCKTERMAN

In 2018, the Luckiest Girl Alive author raised both cheers and eyebrows when she wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled "I Want to Be Rich and I'm Not Sorry." That type of ambition may be the norm in finance or law, but in book publishing, where fiscal prosperity is elusive, artistic integrity is usually the professed goal.

"Can we just say the quiet part out loud?" Knoll, 39, asks over a matcha latte at New York City's ModernHaus hotel. "Women want to be financially successful but also love what they do. It's perfectly possible for these two things to coexist." She knows writers are expected to be "precious" about their art. "I've been passionate about writing since I could hold a pen. But there's a world where men make a lot of money doing this." Knoll would like to profit too.

Luckiest Girl Alive, published in 2015, was a deeply personal book. It centers on a character who survives both a sexual assault and a school shooting, and the gang rape depicted in the novel was drawn from Knoll's own experience being sexually assaulted by three boys at a party when she was 15.  But Knoll also researched the publishing marketplace before starting the novel so she could capitalize on trends. It worked: she rode the wave of thrillers told from a female perspective that began Ilian Flynn's Gone Girl and spawned similarly titled "girl" books like Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train. After a bidding war, Knoll accepted an offer in the high six figures. Luckiest Girl Alive sold more than 1 million copies. Her second novel, 2018's The Favorite Sister, also made best-seller lists.