In the fall of last year, writer Sophia June catalyzed multiple weeks of online discourse when she published “The Makings of a Literary It Girl” in Nylon. Did such an It Girl exist? the X-commentariat wanted to know. Who was reading their books? What constituted an ethical fee for sliding-scale Botox at Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica launch? And should you write a letter to the editor if you weren’t deemed an It Girl yourself?

Through her reporting, June tapped into an energy pulsing through the New York reading-cum-party circuit and in book marketing more generally. That energy only appears to be building. A few years ago mainstream and small publishers alike started selling wearable merch pegged to new releases (not till the 2020s did we have to ask ourselves questions like, ‘Am I more of a Sally Rooney bucket hat or Annie Ernaux death-metal-font dad-cap type of person?’), and now a slew of high-fashion labels have hopped on the books bandwagon (Miu Miu, Chanel, and Comme des Garçons, to name just three). Over on Instagram and BookTok, celebrity reading clubs reign supreme. And, if a recent Elle headline is to be believed, we’ve just departed the dog days of “Lit Girl Summer.” (June commented for the Elle piece, which riffed on her epithet.)

People wanted a different way to engage with books. June and Nylon’s former culture editor, Layla Halabian, took notice. Experiencing the limits of writing about literature, especially from indie publishers, in the traditional media environment, they joined forces to launch their own books-focused publication: Language Arts. The weekly Substack features author interviews, unexpected roundups (“Our Favorite Gay Panic Novels,” “Books that Can Fit in a Luar Bag”), and scene reports—all with levity and energizing-yet-minimal sunset-colored design.

For my own literary culture column, I wanted to chat with June and Halabian about the book as a status symbol, their collaborative working process, and all that happens beyond the page.

“Books are a solitary endeavor, but we, like a lot of readers, are just two girls who like to be out on the town and notice things. It’s fun to make books cool in that way.”

Drew Zeiba: What led you to start Language Arts?

Layla Halabian: We really enjoyed doing book coverage when we were at Nylon. We were able to spotlight a lot of indie authors. And as the media landscape changed, we were like, ‘Oh, this is something that we actually can’t continue to do anymore.’ But Sophia had asked me, ‘What if we just did this together?’ And I was like, ‘This sounds amazing.’ We just started ideating together and then Language Arts was born. 

Sophia June: We were having a lot of fun at Nylon, we were getting a lot of positive feedback from different literary communities, especially around author interviews. I kept hearing from authors and publicists that there just weren’t a lot of places doing in-depth author interviews. We were just really passionate about continuing. We had built up all these relationships and there were so many books that we had wanted to cover and still want to cover. So we went to Substack, which has been an incredibly freeing experience. 

Layla: Doing things completely on our own terms, and just truly having fun with it, and knowing that our audience is going to love it, regardless, has been really, really liberating.

Sophia: I should say, Matt Starr from Dream Baby Press came to me and was like, ‘I think that you and Layla should move to Substack and do this.’ I was complaining to him about a lack of opportunities to write about books, and he was like, ‘Just do it. I know you guys are going to be successful.’ I have to give him credit. 

Layla: Shout out Matt Starr, we couldn’t have done it without you. [Both laugh]

Drew: Do you feel there’s an orientation toward books or different types of books you’re centering? What’s the Language Arts universe of books?

Layla: We love debut authors, we love indie publishers, we love things that might be getting ignored from bigger publications. Our joke is that we write about something, and then six to eight months later, it’s getting a feature somewhere else. We like to have boots on the ground and just really champion these authors when they’re still small and they have a chance to grow. 

Sophia: At the very beginning of our coverage, we weren’t on anyone’s publicity list or anything. So I would just go to indie publishers and look at everything that they were publishing in the next year with an eye for irreverent stories or weird characters. Now I get so many emails from publicists. If I open an email, and they’re like, ‘Good Morning America, blah blah blah blah blah,’ I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to cover it.’ Because even if it sounds good, it’s found its home. It’s so extraordinary for someone to write a book and even more extraordinary to have to market a book so we really try to focus on books that maybe haven’t found their audience yet. We like to help people find those books.

Layla: The weirder and freakier the better.

Drew: You know, one of the things I try to do with this column is look at what I usually call ‘literary culture.’ I discuss books, but usually they’re tied to other ideas or narratives, not just a straight review. I also felt like there was a void to talk about all these scenes, events, people, industry, etc. around making books and putting them into the world. I see Language Arts doing a lot around that too—like you have a party report where you see Brontez [Purnell] across the room and suddenly Brontez goes from being an abstract name to a human being. And, Sophia, you wrote the Nylon article on the ‘literary It Girl.’ So I’m curious about that aspect, about how you cover not only books but the people and culture around them.

Sophia: What is on the page is only part of the interesting things happening around books. It’s everything off the page that I think propels this wider embrace of books. And that is really interesting to me. In recent years people are actually so much more interested in the economics around how you make artwork. 

For ‘literary It Girl,’ I was just going to literary parties covering these smaller books and noticing a through line of how book marketing has completely transformed the experience of a book. Especially because reading is such a solitary act. In the past, you’ve seen book clubs as maybe the most obvious example of how a book can exist off the page. But now, I think what’s really cool is that people are finding more creative ways to experience a book off the page—in terms of parties that are actually fun, in terms of perfume collaborations, merch. I think we’re really interested in, like you said, literary culture, whatever that means, and in the trends associated with it, the characters associated with it. 

Books are, like I said, a solitary endeavor, but we, like a lot of readers, are just two girls who like to be out on the town and notice things. It sounds so corny, but it’s fun to make books cool in that way: to be like, Oh, you could read this really good book and then go to a party and meet a bunch of other people who are into it. That’s really inspiring to us. 

Drew: I work at a fashion magazine, so I was getting tons of press emails for the Miu Miu Literary Club this spring. You did a story on Aesop’s queer library party this summer. I mean, what’s your take on the fashion industry’s growing interest in books? In a way, it feels like books are turned into status items, but of course they’re a lot cheaper than anything you can buy from Miu Miu. 

Layla: I feel like there’s especially something where when you see a book that’s really popular—like people reading it on the subway—and you’re just like, ‘Oh my god, I saw so-and-so reading this.’ Or having a galley before everything comes out. That is a status item. I mean, this is a very obvious one, but the new Sally Rooney novel—people will get the galley for it and they’ll be like, ‘You don’t know how I got this.’ And you’re just like, ‘Cool.’

Sophia: We know exactly how. 

Layla: We’re on those emails as well. But yeah, I do think there’s definitely a status aspect. It falls into the ‘if you know, you know’ category.

Sophia: Yeah, I’ve also done two separate interviews just in the last month about this exact topic, like…

Drew: Sorry!

Sophia: No, no, no. I’m so happy to talk about it. Because I just think it’s really interesting and feels like the most compelling evidence so far of this thing that everyone’s been feeling around, ‘Why is everyone reading now?’ I keep coming back to [the idea that] there is nothing more luxury than leisure. There is nothing more luxurious than having the time to read a book—especially in a collapsing society. It makes all the sense in the world that books are exalted as luxury items. But the beautiful thing is that they’re actually not luxury. They’re very accessible, especially thanks to libraries. 

Chanel and Miu Miu telling everyone that they know how to read is also because models and actresses have been telling everyone that they know how to read. It’s the Kaia Gerbers, the Emma Roberts, the Emratas, it’s the Celebrity Book Club-Industrial Complex at its peak. 

Drew: It’s also like, from a marketing perspective, with a book, somebody’s already done the work of creating a whole universe around that thing, and also there’s an existing audience that you can tap into quite efficiently. I don’t know if that’s cynical or great. 

Sophia: Totally. I think it made sense for Miu Miu because their aesthetic is so slutty librarian.

“There is nothing more luxurious than having the time to read a book—especially in a collapsing society. It makes all the sense in the world that books are exalted as luxury items. But the beautiful thing is that they’re actually not luxury.”

Drew: They’re nerdy. 

Are there books coming out in the next couple months you’re excited about? Obviously you cover a lot of them on Language Arts, but maybe something that has a personal resonance?

Layla: I’ve been at a couple of readings where Sophie Kemp has read. And I just got a galley of [Paradise Logic] yesterday. I actually let out a scream when I got it. So I’m very, very excited to read that just because everything that she’s read so far has been so absurdly funny. I’m drawn to something that almost feels out of pocket with how funny it is. 

Sophia: I can’t wait for that one. I told her over email to send it to both of us. I’m so excited. I’m reading Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner right now. It’s so crazy and weird. That one’s been really fun. I mean, I’ve been talking about this all the time, but I was obsessed with All Fours [by Miranda July]. I thought it was one of the best things I’ve ever read. We have a planning meeting for Language Arts on Sunday, and we kind of have run out of all the content that we had planned so far. I’m really excited to just go through our emails and see how far we can push it and how much fun we can have.

Drew: You mentioned you’re having a planning meeting this weekend. You both have backgrounds in traditional media. So I’m wondering what your collaborative process is like, and how you’ve developed that doing things on your own terms. Are there things that you’re doing differently from your other media jobs, or are you discovering things that are really particular to how you work together for Language Arts?

Layla: The main difference is that we’re no longer slaves to SEO or the whims of personality. When you are at a traditional media establishment, there’s always somebody else whose opinions and tastes can trump your own. We no longer have that, which is a huge blessing.

Sophia: Not having someone telling you to, like, write about Colleen Hoover is a really inspiring new world. [Laughs] But no, we just hang out and gab and laugh and spitball. We also just text all the time and send each other voice notes. Not to say a book metaphor, but we really have been on the same page about everything. It’s like, ‘Oh, you want to do a list of small books that fit in a Luar bag? Perfect.’

Drew: That I feel is a real need. I’ve been trying to buy a bag for years, and I just can’t find one that’s cute, fits a book, and isn’t, like, $2,500. I’m still working on that precise nexus.

Layla: Let us know when you find that.

Sophia: Yeah, pick the bag, and then we will choose books that will fit in it—that are good. I was emailing publicists being like, ‘Um, what are the dimensions of this book?’ [Laughs] It was so silly. 

Drew: On the product subject, we touched on it briefly, but what are your feelings about book merch?

Sophia: I think it’s really fun. I love book merch. Especially when it’s tasteful. I love Madeline Cash’s Earth Angel merch. I thought that was really cute. I am not in possession of a Sally Rooney bucket hat, but I can appreciate what she was trying to do.

Layla: I love [the fragrance] Mona by Universal Flowering, which was for Claudia Dey’s book Daughter. To create this evocative world outside the book is so cool to me. That to me is the most standout. I wish every book had a perfume collab with Marissa Zappas or Courtney [Raguse] from Universal Flowering. I want to be able to think of the book with every spray.

Sophia: The perfumes are just the most genius thing. That’s the most graceful that book marketing will ever be. We’re so lucky to be living in these times.