What makes someone “the greatest girlfriend of all time”? I definitely don’t know—just ask my boyfriend!—but Reality Kahn, the Gowanus-based 23-year-old zine maker and waterpark-commercial star who serves as the protagonist of Sophie Kemp’s debut novel, Paradise Logic, is on a quest to find out. Reality’s obsession with finding love (or, more accurately, with finding someone to love her) is less Bridget Jones’s Diary and more “What the hell did I just read?,” but in the best way possible. Kemp, who has written for Vogue, The Paris Review, GQ, Pitchfork, and the Baffler and now teaches writing at Columbia, is possessed of a voice like nobody else’s, and it’s deployed here to dazzling effect.

This week, Vogue spoke to Kemp about everything from Brandy Melville jewelry and her three-steak pub week, to the best city for falling in love.

Vogue: What was publication day like for you, and how are you preparing for your book launch party?

Sophie Kemp: Pub day was really fun! The night before, I was like, I can’t believe this is finally happening, in, like, a bad way. But then it actually happened, and it was great. I went to a bunch of bookstores all over New York and did a lot of signing. I walked from Flatbush to every Brooklyn bookstore I had to go to, which is a little insane, and then my editor and my agent and the editorial assistant on my book took me out for a steak at Frenchette. It was my third steak of the week.

Get that iron!

Right. Then, today, I’m doing my laundry and getting a blowout before my launch party at Public Records. Put that in for color, that I’m on my way to the laundromat in my sweatpants and my Brandy Melville earrings that turn my ears green. The party’s going to be really fun; I have Megan Nolan, Rayne Fisher-Quann, and Tony Tulathimutte reading.

As someone who really struggles with naming fictional characters, I need to know how you came up with Reality Kahn for your protagonist’s name.

I have a really funny answer to this question, which is that I was listening to a podcast with Ottessa Moshfegh two weeks into me writing my book. This was August of 2021, and she was asked on the podcast what she would name a cat, and she said, “Reality.” I was like, Yeah, that’s it. Then as I started writing the book more, I was like, Oh shit, this is actually the perfect name for cosmic and psychedelic reasons, as well. And then for Kahn, I’m a patrilineal Jew, so I had to throw that in.