Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

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A frank account of the inherent filthiness of leaning in. A study of the psychological, and at times literal, gymnastics that are required of striving women. Raven Leilaini

My own novel is currently on submission for screen adaptation. If I am fortunate enough that people are interested in adapting it, I may be faced with a dilemma: what if someone I know to be part of the problem, someone who I encountered in my previous job or have heard about through the whisper network, wants to buy it? Will I be principled enough to say no? Will I try to convince myself that if they are interested in supporting a critique of Hollywood, the ends will justify the means? Do I actually care enough about these systemic issues or am I also, in a way, exploiting them as literary material for my own professional gain? How can I separate my desire to raise awareness and increase discussion about complicity in Hollywood from my desire to be one of the voices in the conversation? Does it count for anything that I am asking myself these questions or no, not really? I have more questions than answers. I’m not sure if asking them out loud is useful, but it’s a start, and it feels more productive than silence. When I found myself sad and lonely in the Upper West Side apartment of my now-ex-boyfriend’s dreams, I turned to Nora Ephron. I hunted through her body of work searching for clues, trying to understand who and what my ex-boyfriend loved and feared. I was like an obsessed detective with a bulletin board full of snapshots, but instead of suspects, I had still frames of Meg Ryan. I connected threads until they were tangled in knots. The compulsively readable novel about a young woman trying to succeed in Hollywood without selling her soul - perfect for fans of Sweetbitter , My Dark Vanessa and Exciting TimesI left my job at the TV network to go to graduate school, during which time I wrote a novel about a Hollywood assistant and the slippery slope of complicity. When I wrote the novel, I didn’t know if I would return to working in Hollywood. I wrote it as if I wouldn’t, with all the emotional honesty I could muster. The compulsively readable novel about a young woman trying to succeed in Hollywood without selling her soul - perfect for fans of Sweetbitter, My Dark Vanessa and Exciting Times People misunderstand her phrase everything is copy,” my boyfriend explained. “It’s really about making yourself the butt of a joke first so that other people can’t do it to you.” It is a time where compliments should be received with a smile, women expect the worst from other women and apologize for the behaviors of certain men, things sometimes just “go too far” – and we are active participants in our own oppression. So basically, about a decade ago. The ability to bend an inch at a time while seeming to stand up straight is a useful and gendered skill. Most women I know do it regularly. They bend until they’re pretzeled and then blame themselves for the body aches. I’ve thought a lot about these dynamics. I wrote a whole book exploring them. And yet. There I was.

The rare kind of read that made me giggle just as much as it left me gutted." - Zakiya Dalila HarrisThis engaging adult debut is set in Obama-era America, but it’s undeniably informed by the Harvey Weinstein scandal and Hollywood’s subsequent #MeToo movement. Since the protagonist was unnamed, it was easy to put myself in her shoes despite not having anything in common with her. The ending also more or less leaves things u

Blisteringly sharp, hypersmart, and compulsively readable―meet Isabel Kaplan’s searing debut novel about a young woman trying to succeed in Hollywood without selling her soul. Prior to this summer, though I had read quite a bit of her writing, I had never seen a Nora Ephron movie. No, that’s not quite right. I saw Julie & Julia in theaters. I know: what kind of person knows the essay panning the egg white omelet but not how Harry met Sally? I wandered Central Park while listening to Nora narrate I Remember Nothing. I watched When Harry Met Sally, then Sleepless in Seattle, then You’ve Got Mail. I watched her son Jacob Bernstein’s documentary, Everything is Copy. I reread Heartburn. I read Richard Cohen’s memoir of his friendship with Nora, She Made Me Laugh. I gaped at the chapter in which Cohen wrote that he personally would have preferred for Nora to keep the whole sordid business of Carl Bernstein’s affair a secret. I read the critic Leon Wieseltier’s Heartburn review , published in Vanity Fair under the pen name Tristan Vox, in which he accused her of child abuse.A frank account of leaning in and its inherent filthiness. Kaplan captures the psychological, and at times literal, gymnastics required of striving women Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster NSFW is the story of a young Harvard grad who, thanks to a fairly healthy dose of nepotism adjacent connections, lands a temp job at the television network XBC. Her own skillset is what gets our unnamed protagonist promoted to an assistant position for one of the major movers and shakers of the network and eventually even allows her to sit in on pitches for new program development. The timeframe is prior to #metoo where office engagement is taken as . . . . I’m not, of course. I’m a 32-year-old writer who has published two books and is trying to build a literary career. Only once that began to seem like a legitimate possibility did my ex-boyfriend feel threatened by it.

P.S. The blurb says that this is a debut work, but it isn't. The author published a previous book in 2007, also set in LA. After reading this one, I may have to buy it. It's YA but it looks like it's on the more mature end of the YA spectrum. Osteen said: “There’s not so much as a beat out of place in Isabel Kaplan’s prose, with a wit to match. She makes it easy to champion her work, which is engaging, insightful, wry and frankly brilliant. What an honour to have found a home at Penguin Michael Joseph, with a team whose vision is sharp and support boundless.” Here is what has changed in Hollywood since #MeToo: not much. If the bar for tolerable behaviour was on the floor before – no, make that underground – then now, it’s hovering just above floor level. It is widely understood that you are not to grope or make sexual advances on your employees, and that if you do so, you may face consequences. Throwing items in the office, and particularly in the direction of your employees, is now off limits. People previously unaware of the terms “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” have now attended training sessions about them and know that they are bad. They believe themselves to be free of them. A frank account of the inherent filthiness of leaning in. A study of the psychological and at times, literal, gymnastics that are required of striving women." - Raven Leilani A Harvard graduate, she’s smart enough to know what is expected of women like her in this world: it’s not enough to be good at your job, you need to also be appealing and attractive, and willing to play the game, whatever that may be.It was our second time living together – first in Paris, now New York. My second time moving 3,000 miles to be with him. But here, at least, I spoke the language. I had a job and friends. From my perch outside my boss’s office, I saw how little my personal opinion mattered, how interchangeable and dispensable I was. I told myself that someday, when I had enough power that people cared what I had to say, I would make a stand for what was right. We had just moved in together for the first time, in Paris, when he confessed that my keeping a journal made him uncomfortable. People in relationships make all sorts of off-the-cuff comments, and they don’t mean anything, he explained. It made him nervous to think of me remembering or writing down things he said. He joked that if I wrote about him, it would be the end. I promised never to publish anything that he was uncomfortable with. I reminded him that I had never written about him because I knew he didn’t want me to – even during the years we weren’t together. A frank study of the psychological, and at times literal, gymnastics that are required of striving women.' RAVEN LEILANI, bestselling author of Luster