Novel captures angst of 2000s

Gabrielle Korn draws from her experience working in media in ‘Long Island Girls.’

- By EMILY ST. MARTIN

If you've ever pirated music from LimeWire on your parent's desktop PC, bought an American Apparel LBD from a thrift store in a pinch or chatted with your crush on AOL Instant Messenger, Gabrielle Korn’s “Long Island Girls” may be the millennial time capsule you've been longing for.

“Specificity is the gateway to universality,” Korn says from a corner table at Silver Lake's Botanica. “When you're alone with a story for so long, people saying they relate to it is the best gift.”

The former editor in chief of Nylon (a.k.a. the 2000s’ ultimate indie culture and fashion glossy), Korn’s penned a collection of essays, “Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes,” and two cli-fi dystopian novels, “Yours for the Taking” and “The Shutouts.”

Her new book, which hit bookshop shelves this month, is a pivot for the author. Korn says she doesn’t think about genre when she sits down to write, but this one draws from her own experience working in media, "specifically the Nylon of it all." "Long Island Girls" spills over with cultural references and generational nods that place readers in a time machine, with destinations that explore Long Island in the aughts, Brooklyn in 2010 and modern-day Los Angeles. The novel follows Susan, a queer creative untangling the coulda, woulda, shoulda situationship that has spanned decades, while grappling with the reality of a career that dips and shifts in a changing media landscape.

"I think the angst - it's anger, and sadness," Korn says as she takes a sip of her matcha latte. "She had to invent herself... she is making up her life as she goes." The Times sat down with Korn to chat about nostalgia, the coming-of-agequeer experience and making art under capitalism.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Are you the voice of the Indie Sleaze generation?

I don't think that's for me to decide.