‘I think writing about very singular, superlative people allows me a fun way to write about things that affect everyone,’ says author Jenkins Reid, pictured here in L.A. in 2023.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
When you pick up a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel, there are three things that are almost guaranteed: an exceptional woman at its centre, a gut-punching twist toward the end and a journey so transportive you’ll look up from your page with a kind of shock that you’re sitting on your beach chair in 2025 and not, say, watching the U.S. Open from the stands in the nineties, swaying with a crowd at a concert in the seventies or, as in her latest, slack-jawed with horror in NASA’s mission control, watching a space disaster unfold in real time.
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Los Angeles-based Jenkins Reid has traditionally set her stories in the more glamorous niches of her Californian context: Glitter-veneered Old Hollywood in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo; the woozy, freewheeling music scene of 1970s L.A. in Daisy Jones and the Six. Space – or rather, a shuttle program born in the humidity of 1980s Florida – might seem an unlikely frontier.
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“A large part of the reason was because I was thinking about traditionally male-dominated spaces and the women who have, historically, pushed through those barriers,” says Jenkins Reid of Atmosphere, released June 3 and almost certain to join her other massive hit novels as one of the summer’s biggest reads. “But the other part is that, once the thought of a woman as CAPCOM [capsule communicator] landed into my head, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I always listen to that voice.”
In always writing about women who are gifted in their sphere – a tennis champ in Carrie Soto is Back, a movie star in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Joan, an astrophysicist-turned-astronaut in Atmosphere – Jenkins Reid says she is creating an exceptional prism to understand universal conditions.
“I think writing about very singular, superlative people allows me a fun way to write about things that affect everyone,” she says. ”The extraordinary highlights the ordinary. Joan may be an astronaut but she is still trying to figure out who to love, and when to speak up, and a lot of things every woman I know is trying to figure out.”
In that continuing quest into the unknown, The Globe spoke with Jenkins Reid about listening to that inner voice, going viral on BookTok and how you measure success as an internationally bestselling author.
Joan talks about how her inner voice is her greatest gift, and how she is her own greatest friend. Do you feel this way about yourself, particularly as a writer?
I think that I have a good relationship to the voice within me that tells me what I want. And I have found a part of me where I am able to lose myself within my imagination and feel as if I truly live there. Those are both great gifts. But I find Joan’s way of being within herself to be much calmer than mine. She trusts herself and has great compassion for herself, in a way that I hope to one day.
You tend to set your novels in the recent past. Atmosphere, for example, begins in 1980, Daisy Jones is set in the seventies and so on. What is it about this slight remove from our own time that appeals to you?
It can be so transportive. I want to take people somewhere. You might be at home on your couch opening the book, but I can try to make you feel like you’re backstage at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in the 1970s. I can try to make you feel like you’re in the Space Shuttle, looking at Earth from 250 miles away.
But also, writing about the recent past allows me to raise questions for the reader about how much things have really changed. Taking readers to the past allows me to highlight the present.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was one of the original BookTok viral phenoms. What was it like to be on your side of that whole experience?
I’m not on social media very much so it happened largely out of my line of sight. The day I got an e-mail saying that Evelyn Hugo had hit the New York Times list for the first time five years after it was released, I screamed for my husband to come into my office and read the e-mail to be sure I had it right. That’s how unaware I was of what was going on. I’m immensely grateful for the reaction to that book. And very grateful to everyone who told someone else to read it.
You’ve had books turned into TV series, you’ve been a Reese’s Book Club pick, you’ve gone viral on BookTok. Which of these have had the biggest professional impact for you? Or was something else entirely the biggest needle-mover for you?
You know, I’m not sure I can see any of what has happened clearly enough to properly assess it. Each moment you mentioned felt massive and did wonders for my books’ discoverability. And that is, ultimately, what authors need. The chance to get their work in front of readers. I’m so fortunate to have had a few ways where my work has been given that lift. And I see it as my duty to try to do what I can to pass that spotlight on to any great books I read.
My favourite books so far this year have been Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory and Hungerstone by Kat Dunn. And there are some authors writing today that thrill me every time they release a new book, like Canada’s own Karma Brown.
Do you measure success the same way you did at the beginning of your career? Are there certain things that mean more? Mean less?
I think it can be easy to get lost in the various metrics of success, to start believing in their exaggerated significance. What I’ve done the past few years is, I’ve taken that yearning for outside validation and given that measure of validation back to myself. Does the finished manuscript come close to doing what I set out to do? Am I happy with it? That has to be enough.
It’s an impressive feat to sit down and write every day until you have a book to show for it. Whether you’ve had nine novels published or you have one story you wrote years ago that you keep in a drawer. Every time I finish a book, I throw myself onto the couch and breathe a sigh of relief and let myself be proud of myself for a few days. And then I start another one.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
