In Camryn Garrett’s second novel, Off the Record (Knopf, May 18), 12th grader Josie Wright beats out thousands of competitors for the opportunity to go on a cross-country movie press tour and do a series of interviews with attractive, up-and-coming, Black, French American actor Marius Canet for a major entertainment magazine. Forced by her parents to bring her gregarious, blunt, confident older sister along as chaperone, Josie—who lives with social anxiety—soon faces bigger challenges than everyday sibling tensions and an awkward, possibly mutual, crush on her interview subject. She makes friends with a young female actor from the film who confides that Roy Lennox, an Oscar-winning Hollywood legend who is directing Marius’ next movie, is a serial sexual predator who has preyed on her and other women.

Soon Josie is pursuing two stories—one so explosive she’s unsure whether anyone will go on the record with their experiences. And even if they do, what news outlet would stand up to one of the most powerful men in the film industry and publish an exposé by a 17-year-old? This compelling page-turner with well-drawn characters is very much of this moment while highlighting themes that, unfortunately, are of perennial significance. Garrett, a student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, spoke with us over Zoom from her home in Brooklyn, New York; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s sadly very clear where the general inspiration for a story like this would come from, but was there a specific event that prompted you to write it?

I wrote the first half in 2019, when a lot of women were telling #MeToo stories, especially on social media. There were a lot of kids from my school making group chats and sharing This happened to me, and this person did this to me. So I was trying to think of an outlet to explore those ideas.

Another timely theme is the importance of investigative journalism. What does this element of the story mean to you?

One of the reasons why I wrote this is because I didn’t go into journalism and I wanted to write about my love of it. I was a Time for Kids journalist when I was 13 and then my high school had a really cool program where you could take a journalism class. You had to be a sophomore, but my teacher let me take it as a freshman, so I took it all four years, and it was a big part of my life. And I freelanced. I just am so in awe of journalists. The industry is really rough to be in; it’s not the way it was—there’s not as much security and not a lot of protection either. When these #MeToo stories were coming out, I couldn’t wrap my mind around how one journalist would have to switch gears so many times. You’d have to be looking at legal documents, you’d have to be talking to the survivors and be approachable enough to be able to take down these stories, and then you’d have to deal with the accused abusers. How do you switch gears and do that? I thought that was such an amazing thing, and I wanted to write a teenager who could and have it be almost like a superpower. Especially since I decided not to go into journalism, I was like, Let me live vicariously through her.

One of my favorite things about the book was how well-rounded and real the female characters were: Each was imperfect in a human and sympathetic way yet fundamentally supportive of other women, not tearing them down.

I’m really glad that you picked that up. I obviously read a lot of YA, and I [did] growing up, and I think it has shifted in a great direction since I’ve gotten older, but those [negative] archetypes [about women’s relationships] exist in all the media we consume. So, especially since it’s a book about this topic that affects women in a tough way, I didn’t want anyone to be one-dimensional. I wanted everyone to feel real, because that was what they deserved when it comes to a topic that’s so weighty and heavy. And those are just the types of characters that I want to see, so I’m glad that they came [across] that way. I love sister stories, like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Little Women, so I wanted to write something where it’s a little contentious but ultimately loving.

The line where Josie remembers her sister’s advice to the effect that she can’t have an impact on the world if she’s not healthy herself really resonated with me. Does this come from personal experience?

I definitely feel the same way, especially recently. I was very bad at this—I tried to take a social media break, and I lasted three or four days. But one of the reasons I did [it was] because I kept telling my friends, I feel so bad that I can’t devote equal energy to all these atrocities that keep happening, one right after the other. I don’t think that me tweeting something fairly basic while I’m anxious about a million things is going to do anything. I think pulling back was really helpful. I definitely was writing that line to try to save myself but also other people: We’re so much more connected now, but because of that we’re constantly seeing everything. There’s so many ways that you can help, but you can’t do all of them, so it’s really easy to feel guilty. But you’re just one person.

I appreciated how Josie’s being a queer, fat, Black girl with anxiety was all woven together so naturally, making her feel so much like someone you would know in real life. Too often it seems like there is this implicit message that characters from marginalized groups should have some artificial limit on how many identities they are allowed to have. Of course, that’s not how reality works.

I’ve definitely gotten that, not with this specific book, but before: There’s so much going on in terms of identity. I don’t like that critique, because if [Josie] had been a White, cis, straight dude, no one would say, These are deliberate choices. But I made her Black and she’s a girl and she’s bisexual—those are all seen as me making deliberate choices. And I was, but I hate that “the default” isn’t seen as a choice. Her having all these different aspects of who she is makes her feel more real: I don’t think one person is just one thing. When I was younger I cobbled together different YA books—books with plus-size protagonists and books about girls dealing with sexual assault and [ones] about Black girls. It felt, at least when I was younger, that they couldn’t have multiple things [going on]; I’d have to read them separately. So something I wanted to do was put them all together.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.