Sunny's Bookshop | Sunny's Journal | Gabrielle Korn | The Shutouts | Gabrielle Korn Interview

Author Gabrielle Korn – who was previously the Editor-in-Chief of Nylon Media – has created a dystopian, near-future world, in which the effects of climate change have irrevocably altered humanity's way of living. This world was introduced in 2023’s Yours for the Taking, in which a select few were chosen to live in the Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-like structures that are located around the world – although the safe haven may not be as safe, nor as straightforward, as it seems. Korn’s second novel in this world, the soon-to-be-released The Shutouts, focuses on those who were left to deal with the rapidly changing world outside of the Inside Project – as well as couple Inside Project escapees. The Shutouts takes place in two timelines: in 2041, a mother named Kelly writes letters to her estranged daughter to explain why she left her several years ago; in 2078, a collection of those who were “shut out” continue on with their lives. These characters include Ava and her daughter, Brook, who leave The Inside Project in search of someone important to them.

In these novels, the future that Korn presents is grim and dark, but not without its moments of lightness. Despite the darkness, this world is all-encompassing and engrossing, while Korn’s prose is sharp and skillfully crafted. Climate change fiction is becoming all the more important and Korn’s work stands among the best of this fairly new – but rapidly growing – genre.

Below is our conversion about the world of both novels, the writing process, and more.

Sunny's Bookshop | The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn | book

Nikki: Firstly, I’d love to hear about how you knew you wanted to be a writer and, specifically, that you wanted to write fiction.

Gabrielle : I can't remember ever wanting to be anything else. Writing has always been something that I’ve loved doing as soon as I learned how to do it. I think where I struggled was [figuring out] how to make money off of it. So I did always imagine myself writing novels, but when I was graduating college, I couldn’t really reconcile that drive with supporting myself. So I went into journalism and I stayed there for ten years. At the end of that period of time, I just had this feeling of yes, I could keep doing it but it’s not really what I always saw myself doing. Also [I felt like] if I don’t write a novel [now], I’ll never write a novel.

Nikki: That must have been so satisfying then, when Yours for the Taking came out.

Gabrielle: Yeah, it felt amazing. I wished I had done it sooner.

Nikki: How did you decide to set The Shutouts in the same world as Yours for the Taking? Now, hearing your first answer, I’m wondering if it was a way to extend the satisfying feeling of publishing your first novel?

Gabrielle: Yes and no. We had always talked about this being a series – we being me and my editor Hannah O’Grady at St. Martin’s Press. I ended Yours for the Taking on a cliffhanger. I love a vague ending but a lot of people don’t, so when we were talking about what to write next, my editor was very much like, ‘I really think you should write the sequel.’ It had been kind of abstract to me but because I had her support to do it, then I started doing it. And there were all of these little seeds that I planted throughout Yours for the Taking while I was writing it, and I thought to myself, this could be a whole other book.

Nikki: Yeah, there is so much to explore within this world and I loved that. The Shutouts is described as “in the same world” as Yours for the Taking, rather than specifically a sequel. So, I dove in without reading Yours for the Taking first, so I feel like I had an interesting experience reading it. Do you want readers to read Yours for the Taking first or did you intend for The Shutouts to stand on its own?

Gabrielle: It’s a good question and I would love to know what you think too, reading it in reverse order. I wanted it to stand alone. In my mind, these are interconnected standalones. I think if you read Yours for the Taking first, there is a lot of pay off in The Shutouts, but my hope was if you come to The Shutouts first, then you won't be lost.

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Nikki: That’s exactly how I felt. And it just made me more excited to read Yours for the Taking. What was your process like for creating this world? Specifically, how did you get the idea for the Inside Project?

Gabrielle: It’s a hard question to answer because I felt like the world came to me all at once. So the work was figuring out a way to write it down [in a way] that was coherent. In early drafts of Yours for the Taking, I had approached it as though I was writing a reported feature because that's what I had been doing. So instead of having different chapters, each one being one perspective, I tried to have an omniscient narrator in which everyone's point of view is woven together. But it was a mess. So I ended up going through and separating everything out and pulling out all of the world building details and doing a prologue to establish the world. And that became a lot easier for readers to digest from how I originally thought of it. But, how I thought of the Inside Project, I was in Paris for Fashion Week, it was February 2020. My last day in Milan was when Italy shut down for the pandemic. I just had this feeling like we were all fleeing a thing and then getting to a new destination where there was all of this denial that the thing was coming. I wrote the idea for the Inside Project before we knew what quarantining was, but it just felt like an odd coincidence that we then all went inside. But also, I was spending so much time in airports and hotels and feeling very claustrophobic and I think it came from that.

Nikki: I think that makes a lot of sense. And, of course you needed time to write it, but it would have been so interesting for readers to experience Yours for the Taking during quarantine.

Gabrielle: Oh I know!

Nikki: But it was so fresh, no one is forgetting what that time was like.

Gabrielle: Yeah, totally. I also was having some climate change anxiety and decided to research when exactly the shit is gonna hit the fan if nothing changes. And that’s 2050. In that research, what I was also looking for was [the question of] how are we going to live with it and what does it actually look like. Of course the answer is we can’t. If nothing changes, then we will no longer be able to adapt. So I tried to imagine what a future society would think was a solution and what sorts of technology would be invented to try to adapt to it. The only thing I could think of was that we would have to live in a protected space.

Nikki: How did you decide to make it as grim as it is? Were you going for it as the worst possible outcome?

Gabrielle: Yeah! But also Yours for the Taking started off as satire. I was like, what sorts of people will come to power in a worst case scenario and what sort of ridiculous ways can I make them behave in? The book got a lot more serious over the course of working on it, but, at first, I didn't intend for it to feel realistic. I tried to stretch things to their worst logical conclusion, but I think as we watch what’s happening politically, the consequences for the climate become closer and closer to what I wrote.

Nikki: Yeah, I think, as I was reading it, there were many elements where I thought, I could see that happening. It got me thinking about the growing genre of climate change fiction and wondering how the genre will affect how people view what’s happening in the world or even if it could somehow impact future policy decisions.

Gabrielle: I don’t know if books can change what people in power do, but I do think that there’s a lot of potential on an individual level. I know that I made a lot of changes to my own lifestyle in the process of researching for this book because after you know certain things, you just can't proceed in the same ways. I just don't think that a Republican government is going to make the changes needed to slow global warming. So I think it is going to come down to us and I think we have to try to change people's minds however possible. So if that means more climate fiction books, then that's what it means.

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Nikki: Yeah, I like that. I think there’s a bit of hope when you think of it in that way, that enough individual people care and that’s how a difference can be made.

Gabrielle: I don’t think we have to be doomed.

Nikki: How did you approach the tone of both novels? As grim as it is, there are plenty of moments of lightness and people living their lives and finding joy.

Gabrielle: It was really important to me that both books feel very, very human. I think that The Shutouts is a lot more character-driven than Yours for the Taking, which was really enjoyable for me to spend more time with the characters. But when you think about the way that people behave in disasters, we don't stop being human, we don't stop loving and needing each other. I think, if anything, all of those things become heightened. So I really wanted to show that and to show that there’s no point to survival if you don't have other people. That's why we're alive. To me, the connections between people in the book are just as important as the natural disasters happening in the background.

Nikki: Do you have any plans for a third book set in this world?

Gabrielle: I would love to, but it’s not up to me. If there was a lot of interest in a third book, then I think I'll be able to do one, but it’s kind of a wait and see moment.

Nikki: Half of the book is in the form of letters, as Kelly writes letters to her daughter. How did you know that you wanted to include that format?

Gabrielle: I just heard Kelly’s voice in my head. So much of fiction is just being delusional and just accepting that you’re writing down what the voices are telling you and her voice was just so clear. It just felt like letters. It felt like she was speaking to someone and that someone wasn't the reader. It was hard to imagine telling the story any other way.

Nikki: What books or authors inspired The Shutouts?

Gabrielle: I’ve always been a big Octavia Butler girl, specifically her climate change fiction and the travel-on-foot storyline was really inspirational to me. Obviously Margaret Atwood, in terms of feminist dystopia. I think also Kazuo Ishiguro was really inspiring to me, in terms of the way that he reveals the mystery over time of what he’s writing about. I think those are the big ones.

Nikki: The way a mystery unravels over the course of a story is hard to get right.

Gabrielle: Yeah and my editor is really good at mystery. She ended up pushing me to put off the reveal of who Kelly is further and further in the book. I originally wanted it up front, but the feedback was to put it off as long as possible and I think that makes the book a lot more propulsive.

Nikki: What other genres are you interested in writing? Are you working on anything right now?

Gabrielle: Yeah, I have a book that’s literary nonfiction that I’ve been working on for a few years. It’s really interesting to not be writing science fiction because I feel like I’m approaching the world building in the same way, like thinking of myself as alien to what I'm writing and thinking about what details an alien would need. So even though it’s grounded in the present, it's kind of a similar way of thinking

Nikki: What contemporary books have you read lately and loved?

Gabrielle: Oh my god, so many. The most recent book that I finished was Carrie Carolyn Coco by Sarah Gerard, which is the true account of a woman who was stabbed to death by her roommate in Bushwick. The author was a friend of the victim and she does an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the murder. It was brilliant and really upsetting. I’m listening to Sally Rooney’s newest book [Intermezzo] on audiobook – I always do Sally Rooney on audiobook because I think you need to hear the accents. And recently I read Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker, which was amazing.

Nikki: Is there anything else you want readers to know about The Shutouts?

Gabrielle: Come to the event at Sunny’s!

Nikki: First and foremost, come to our event [on December 13 at 7 pm].

Gabrielle: But in all seriousness, I think that these books are more relevant than I realized they would be to what's happening in the world. And I think it’s easy to want to look away from what’s happening, but I think that fiction is your second best option. What I tried to do in The Shutouts, specifically, was build in a lot of hope and love and joy. So I think that if you feel hopeless and you feel doom, especially about climate and reproductive rights and rights for queer people, I think this is a good book to validate your fears and to also find moments of levity.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.