TIME

Success, revenge, and Jessica Knoll

Success doesn’t look the same for novelist Jessica Knoll as it did five years ago. In 2018, the Luckiest Girl Alive author raised both cheers and eyebrows when she wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry.” That type of ambition may be the norm in finance or law, but in book publishing, where fiscal prosperity is elusive, artistic integrity is usually the professed goal.

“Can we just say the quiet part out loud?” Knoll, 39, asks over a matcha latte at New York City’s ModernHaus hotel. “Women want to be financially successful but also love what they do. It’s perfectly possible for these two things to coexist.” She knows writers are expected to be “precious” about their art. “I’ve been passionate about

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